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“Why mine?” said Anna. “After yours I don’t want another por-
trait. Better have one of Annie” (so she called her baby girl). “Here she
is,” she added, looking out of the window at the handsome Italian
nurse, who was carrying the child out into the garden, and immediately
glancing unnoticed at Vronsky. The handsome nurse, from whom
Vronsky was painting a head for his picture, was the one hidden grief
in Anna’s life. He painted with her as his model, admired her beauty
and medievalism, and Anna dared not confess to herself that she was
afraid of becoming jealous of this nurse, and was for that reason par-
ticularly gracious and condescending both to her and her little son.
Vronsky, too, glanced out of the window and into Anna’s eyes, and,
turning at once to Golenishtchev, he said:
“Do you know this Mihailov?”
“I have met him. But he’s a queer fish, and quite without breeding.
You know, one of those uncouth new people one’s so often coming
across nowadays, One of those free-thinkers you know, who are reared
d’emblee in theories of atheism, scepticism, and materialism. In former
days,” said Golenishtchev, not observing, or not willing to observe, that
both Anna and Vronsky wanted to speak, “in former days the free-
thinker was a man who had been brought up in ideas of religion, law,
and morality, and only through conflict and struggle came to free-
thought; but now there has sprung up a new type of born free-thinkers
who grow up without even having heard of principles of morality or of
religion, of the existence of authorities, who grow up directly in ideas of
negation in everything, that is to say, savages. Well, he’s of that class.
He’s the son, it appears, of some Moscow butler, and has never had any
sort of bringing-up. When he got into the academy and made his
reputation he tried, as he’s no fool, to educate himself. And he turned
to what seemed to him the very source of culture—the magazines. In
old times, you see, a man who wanted to educate himself—a French-
man, for instance—would have set to work to study all the classics and
theologians and tragedians and historiaris and philosophers, and, you
know, all the intellectual work that came in his way. But in our day he
goes straight for the literature of negation, very quickly assimilates all
the extracts of the science of negation, and he’s ready. And that’s not
all—twenty years ago he would have found in that literature traces of
conflict with authorities, with the creeds of the ages; he would have
perceived from this conflict that there was something else; but now he
comes at once upon a literature in which the old creeds do not even
furnish matter for discussion, but it is stated baldly that there is noth-
ing else—evolution, natural selection, struggle for existence—and that’s
all. In my article I’ve...”
“I tell you what,” said Anna, who had for a long while been ex-
changing wary glances with Vronsky, and knew that he was not in the
least interested in the education of this artist, but was simply absorbed
by the idea of assisting him, and ordering a portrait of him; “I tell you
what,” she said, resolutely interrupting Golenishtchev, who was still
talking away, “let’s go and see him!”
Golenishtchev recovered his self-possession and readily agreed.
But as the artist lived in a remote suburb, it was decided to take the
carriage.
An hour later Anna, with Golenishtchev by her side and Vronsky
on the front seat of the carriage, facing them, drove up to a new ugly
house in the remote suburb. On learning from the porter’s wife, who
came out to them, that Mihailov saw visitors at his studio, but that at
that moment he was in his lodging only a couple of steps off, they sent
her to him with their cards, asking permission to see his picture.