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This playing with words, this hiding of a secret, had a great fascina-
tion for Anna, as, indeed, it has for all women. And it was not the
necessity of concealment, not the aim with which the concealment was
contrived, but the process of concealment itself which attracted her.
“I can’t be more Catholic than the Pope,” she said. “Stremov and
Liza Merkalova, why, they’re the cream of the cream of society. Be-
sides, they’re received everywhere, and I”—she laid special stress on
the I—”have never been strict and intolerant. It’s simply that I haven’t
the time.”
“No; you don’t care, perhaps, to meet Stremov? Let him and Alexey
Alexandrovitch tilt at each other in the committee— that’s no affair of
ours. But in the world, he’s the most amiable man I know, and a
devoted croquet player. You shall see. And, in spite of his absurd
position as Liza’s lovesick swain at his age, you ought to see how he
carries off the absurd position. He’s very nice. Sappho Shtoltz you don’t
know? Oh, that’s a new type, quite new.”
Betsy said all this, and, at the same time, from her good-humored,
shrewd glance, Anna felt that she partly guessed her plight, and was
hatching something for her benefit. They were in the little boudoir.
“I must write to Alexey though,” and Betsy sat down to the table,
scribbled a few lines, and put the note in an envelope.
“I’m telling him to come to dinner. I’ve one lady extra to dinner
with me, and no man to take her in. Look what I’ve said, will that
persuade him? Excuse me, I must leave you for a minute. Would you
seal it up, please, and send it off?” she said from the door; “I have to
give some directions.”
Without a moment’s thought, Anna sat down to the table with
Betsy’s letter, and, without reading it, wrote below: “It’s essential for
me to see you. Come to the Vrede garden. I shall be there at six
o’clock.” She sealed it up, and, Betsy coming back, in her presence
handed the note to be taken.
At tea, which was brought them on a little tea-table in the cool
little drawing room, the cozy chat promised by Princess Tverskaya
before the arrival of her visitors really did come off between the two
women. They criticized the people they were expecting, and the con-
versation fell upon Liza Merkalova.
“She’s very sweet, and I always liked her,” said Anna.
“You ought to like her. She raves about you. Yesterday she came
up to me after the races and was in despair at not finding you. She says
you’re a real heroine of romance, and that if she were a man she would
do all sorts of mad things for your sake. Stremov says she does that as
it is.”
“But do tell me, please, I never could make it out,” said Anna, after
being silent for some time, speaking in a tone that showed she was not
asking an idle question, but that what she was asking was of more
importance to her than it should have been; “do tell me, please, what
are her relations with Prince Kaluzhsky, Mishka, as he’s called? I’ve
met them so little. What does it mean?”
Betsy smiled with her eyes, and looked intently at Anna.
“It’s a new manner,” she said. “They’ve all adopted that manner.
They’ve flung their caps over the windmills. But there are ways and
ways of flinging them.”
“Yes, but what are her relations precisely with Kaluzhsky?”
Betsy broke into unexpectedly mirthful and irrepressible laughter,
a thing which rarely happened with her.
“You’re encroaching on Princess Myakaya’s special domain now.
That’s the question of an enfant terrible,” and Betsy obviously tried to
restrain herself, but could not, and went off into peals of that infectious