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Alexandrovitch. The smartly dressed and healthy-looking nurse, fright-
ened at the idea of losing her place, muttered something to herself, and
covering her bosom, smiled contemptuously at the idea of doubts be-
ing cast on her abundance of milk. In that smile, too, Alexey
Alexandrovitch saw a sneer at his position.
“Luckless child!” said the nurse, hushing the baby, and still walking
up and down with it.
Alexey Alexandrovitch sat down, and with a despondent and suf-
fering face watched the nurse walking to and fro.
When the child at last was still, and had been put in a deep bed,
and the nurse, after smoothing the little pillow, had left her, Alexey
Alexandrovitch got up, and walking awkwardly on tiptoe, approached
the baby. For a minute he was still, and with the same despondent face
gazed at the baby; but all at once a smile, that moved his hair and the
skin of his forehead, came out on his face, and he went as softly out of
the room.
In the dining room he rang the bell, and told the servant who came
in to send again for the doctor. He felt vexed with his wife for not being
anxious about this exquisite baby, and in this vexed humor he had no
wish to go to her; he had no wish, either, to see Princess Betsy. But his
wife might wonder why he did not go to her as usual; and so, overcom-
ing his disinclination, he went towards the bedroom. As he walked
over the soft rug towards the door, he could not help overhearing a
conversation he did not want to hear.
“If he hadn’t been going away, I could have understood your an-
swer and his too. But your husband ought to be above that,” Betsy was
saying.
“It’s not for my husband; for myself I don’t wish it. Don’t say that!”
answered Anna’s excited voice.
“Yes, but you must care to say good-bye to a man who has shot
himself on your account....”
“That’s just why I don’t want to.”
With a dismayed and guilty expression, Alexey Alexandrovitch
stopped and would have gone back unobserved. But reflecting that
this would be undignified, he turned back again, and clearing his throat,
he went up to the bedroom. The voices were silent, and he went in.
Anna, in a gray dressing gown, with a crop of short clustering black
curls on her round head, was sitting on a settee. The eagerness died
out of her face, as it always did, at the sight of her husband; she dropped
her head and looked round uneasily at Betsy. Betsy, dressed in the
height of the latest fashion, in a hat that towered somewhere over her
head like a shade on a lamp, in a blue dress with violet crossway stripes
slanting one way on the bodice and the other way on the skirt, was
sitting beside Anna, her tall flat figure held erect. Bowing her head,
she greeted Alexey Alexandrovitch with an ironical smile.
“Ah!” she said, as though surprised. “I’m very glad you’re at home.
You never put in an appearance anywhere, and I haven’t seen you ever
since Anna has been ill. I have heard all about it—your anxiety. Yes,
you’re a wonderful husband!” she said, with a meaning and affable air,
as though she were bestowing an order of magnanimity on him for his
conduct to his wife.
Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed frigidly, and kissing his wife’s hand,
asked how she was.
“Better, I think,” she said, avoiding his eyes.
“But you’ve rather a feverish-looking color,” he said, laying stress
on the word “feverish.”
“We’ve been talking too much,” said Betsy. “I feel it’s selfishness
on my part, and I am going away.”