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“But of that we’ll talk later. What’s this, what are all these build-
ings?” she asked, wanting to change the conversation and pointing to
the red and green roofs that came into view behind the green hedges of
acacia and lilac. “Quite a little town.”
But Anna did not answer.
“No, no! How do you look at my position, what do you think of it?”
she asked.
“I consider...” Darya Alexandrovna was beginning, but at that in-
stant Vassenka Veslovsky, having brought the cob to gallop with the
right leg foremost, galloped past them, bumping heavily up and down
in his short jacket on the chamois leather of the side saddle. “He’s
doing it, Anna Arkadyevna!” he shouted.
Anna did not even glance at him; but again it seemed to Darya
Alexandrovna out of place to enter upon such a long conversation in
the carriage, and so she cut short her thought.
“I don’t think anything,” she said, “but I always loved you, and if
one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not
as one would like them to be....”
Anna, taking her eyes off her friend’s face and dropping her eyelids
(this was a new habit Dolly had not seen in her before), pondered,
trying to penetrate the full significance of the words. And obviously
interpreting them as she would have wished, she glanced at Dolly.
“If you had any sins,” she said, “they would all be forgiven you for
your coming to see me and these words.”
And Dolly saw that tears stood in her eyes. She pressed Anna’s
hand in silence.
“Well, what are these buildings? How many there are of them!”
After a moment’s silence she repeated her question.
“These are the servants’ houses, barns, and stables,” answered
Anna. “And there the park begins. It had all gone to ruin, but Alexey
had everything renewed. He is very fond of this place, and, what I
never expected, he has become intensely interested in looking after it.
But his is such a rich nature! Whatever he takes up, he does splen-
didly. So far from being bored by it, he works with passionate interest.
He—with his temperament as I know it—he has become careful and
businesslike, a first-rate manager, he positively reckons every penny in
his management of the land. But only in that. When it’s a question of
tens of thousands, he doesn’t think of money.” She spoke with that
gleefully sly smile with which women often talk of the secret character-
istics only known to them—of those they love. “Do you see that big
building? that’s the new hospital. I believe it will cost over a hundred
thousand; that’s his hobby just now. And do you know how it all came
about? The peasants asked him for some meadowland, I think it was,
at a cheaper rate, and he refused, and I accused him of being miserly.
Of course it was not really because of that, but everything together, he
began this hospital to prove, do you see, that he was not miserly about
money. C’est une petitesse, if you like, but I love him all the more for it.
And now you’ll see the house in a moment. It was his grandfather’s
house, and he has had nothing changed outside.”
“How beautiful!” said Dolly, looking with involuntary admiration
at the handsome house with columns, standing out among the differ-
ent-colored greens of the old trees in the garden.
“Isn’t it fine? And from the house, from the top, the view is won-
derful.”
They drove into a courtyard strewn with gravel and bright with
flowers, in which two laborers were at work putting an edging of stones
round the light mould of a flower bed, and drew up in a covered entry.
“Ah, they’re here already!” said Anna, looking at the saddle horses,