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When the driver stopped the horses, Sofya Lvovna jumped out of the sledge and, unescorted and alone, went quickly up to the gate. "Make haste, please!" her husband called to her. "It's late already." She went in at the dark gateway, then by the avenue that led from the gate to the chief church.
"If you had come not ten but a hundred thousand miles, if the king even had come from America or from some other distant land, even then I should think it my duty . . . sacred, so to say, obligation . . ." "Does the forest belong to Nadyezhda Lvovna?" asked the prince. "Yes, Nadyezhda Lvovna . . ." "Is she at home now?"
Sofya Lvovna began crying, she did not know why, and for a minute she shed tears in silence, then she wiped her eyes and said: "Rita will be very sorry not to have seen you. She is with us too. And Volodya's here. They are close to the gate. How pleased they'd be if you'd come out and see them. Let's go out to them; the service hasn't begun yet. "Let us," Olga agreed.
"Her honour will be here in a minute, sir . . ." sighed the old lady, frowning too. A few more minutes of waiting and I saw Nadyezhda Lvovna. What struck me first of all was that she certainly was ugly, short, scraggy, and round-shouldered.
Vera Lvovna was silent, as usual; and soon went to see Natasha. Polunin also was quiet, walking about the room with his hands behind his back. Kseniya Ippolytovna jested in a wilful, merry, and coquettish fashion with Arkhipov, who answered her in a polite, serious, and punctilious manner. He was unable to carry on a light, witty conversation, and was acutely conscious of his own awkwardness.
"And so, Nadyezhda Lvovna," I sighed, moving away from the window, "you will not permit . . ." Madame Kandurin was silent. "I have the honour to take my leave," I said, "and I beg you to forgive my disturbing you. . ."
And her mother died of grief." He turned up his collar again. "Olga did well," he added in a muffled voice. "Living as an adopted child, and with such a paragon as Sofya Lvovna, one must take that into consideration too!" Sofya Lvovna heard a tone of contempt in his voice, and longed to say something rude to him, but she said nothing.
The tea-urn softly simmered and seethed, emitting a low, hissing sound in unison with that of the wires. The men took up their tea and returned to their chess. Vera Lvovna returned from the drawing-room; and, taking a seat on the sofa beside her husband, sat there without stirring, with the fixed, motionless eyes of a nocturnal bird. "Have you examined the Goya, Vera Lvovna?"
That's right! The great thing is the serving, that's it." And with a complacent sigh he would return to the drawing room. "Marya Lvovna Karagina and her daughter!" announced the countess' gigantic footman in his bass voice, entering the drawing room. The countess reflected a moment and took a pinch from a gold snuffbox with her husband's portrait on it. "I'm quite worn out by these callers.
Kseniya Ippolytovna had been listening, alert and restless. "But all the same," she answered Vera Lvovna animatedly, "Isn't the absence of tragedy the true tragedy?" "Yes, that alone." "And love?" "No, not love." "But aren't you married?" "I want my baby." Kseniya Ippolytovna, who was lying on the sofa, rose up on her knees, and stretching out her arms cried: "Ah, a baby! Is that not instinct?"
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