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utterly unlike what she had been when he first saw her. Both morally
and physically she had changed for the worse. She had broadened out
all over, and in her face at the time when she was speaking of the
actress there was an evil expression of hatred that distorted it. He
looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with
difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it.
And in spite of this he felt that then, when his love was stronger, he
could, if he had greatly wished it, have torn that love out of his heart;
but now, when as at that moment it seemed to him he felt no love for
her, he knew that what bound him to her could not be broken.
“Well, well, what was it you were going to say about the prince? I
have driven away the fiend,” she added. The fiend was the name they
had given her jealousy. “What did you begin to tell me about the
prince? Why did you find it so tiresome?”
“Oh, it was intolerable!” he said, trying to pick up the thread of his
interrupted thought. “He does not improve on closer acquaintance. If
you want him defined, here he is: a prime, well-fed beast such as takes
medals at the cattle shows, and nothing more,” he said, with a tone of
vexation that interested her.
“No; how so?” she replied. “He’s seen a great deal, anyway; he’s
cultured?”
“It’s an utterly different culture—their culture. He’s cultivated,
one sees, simply to be able to despise culture, as they despise every-
thing but animal pleasures.”
“But don’t you all care for these animal pleasures?” she said, and
again he noticed a dark look in her eyes that avoided him.
“How is it you’re defending him?” he said, smiling.
“I’m not defending him, it’s nothing to me; but I imagine, if you had
not cared for those pleasures yourself, you might have got out of them.
But if it affords you satisfaction to gaze at Therese in the attire of
Eve...”
“Again, the devil again,” Vronsky said, taking the hand she had laid
on the table and kissing it.
“Yes; but I can’t help it. You don’t know what I have suffered
waiting for you. I believe I’m not jealous. I’m not jealous: I believe you
when you’re here; but when you’re away somewhere leading your life,
so incomprehensible to me...”
She turned away from him, pulled the hook at last out of the cro-
chet work, and rapidly, with the help of her forefinger, began working
loop after loop of the wool that was dazzling white in the lamplight,
while the slender wrist moved swiftly, nervously in the embroidered
cuff.
“How was it, then? Where did you meet Alexey Alexandrovitch?”
Her voice sounded in an unnatural and jarring tone.
“We ran up against each other in the doorway.”
“And he bowed to you like this?”
She drew a long face, and half-closing her eyes, quickly trans-
formed her expression, folded her hands, and Vronsky suddenly saw in
her beautiful face the very expression with which Alexey
Alexandrovitch had bowed to him. He smiled, while she laughed gaily,
with that sweet, deep laugh, which was one of her greatest charms.
“I don’t understand him in the least,” said Vronsky. “If after your
avowal to him at your country house he had broken with you, if he had
called me out—but this I can’t understand. How can he put up with
such a position? He feels it, that’s evident.”
“He?” she said sneeringly. “He’s perfectly satisfied.”
“What are we all miserable for, when everything might be so
happy?”