Although in feminine society Anatole habitually took up the attitude of a man weary of the attentions of women, his vanity was agreeably flattered by the spectacle of the effect he produced on these three women. Moreover, he was beginning to feel towards the pretty and provocative Mademoiselle Bourienne that violent, animal feeling, which was apt to come upon him with extreme rapidity, and to impel him to the coarsest and most reckless actions.
After tea the party moved into the divan-room, and Princess Marya was asked to play on the clavichord. Anatole leaned on his elbow facing her, and near Mademoiselle Bourienne, and his eyes were fixed on Princess Marya, full of laughter and glee. Princess Marya felt his eyes upon her with troubled and joyful agitation. Her favourite sonata bore her away to a world of soul-felt poetry, and the feeling of his eyes upon her added still more poetry to that world. The look in Anatole’s eyes, though they were indeed fixed upon her, had reference not to Ler, but to the movements of Mademoiselle’s little foot, which he was at that very time touching with his own under the piano. Mademoiselle Bourienne too was gazing at Princess Marya, and in her fine eyes, too, there was an expression of frightened joy and hope that was new to the princess.
‘How she loves me!’ thought Princess Marya. ‘How happy I am now and how happy I may be with such a friend and such a husband! Can he
possibly be my husband?’ she thought, not daring to glance at his face, but still feeling his eyes fastened upon her.
When the party broke up after supper, Anatole kissed Princess Marya’s hand. She was herself at a loss to know how she had the hardihood, but she looked straight with her short-sighted eyes at the handsome face as it came close to her. After the princess, he bent over the hand of Mademoiselle Bourienne (it was a breach of etiquette, but he did everything with the same ease and simplicity) and Mademoiselle Bourienne crimsoned and glanced in dismay at the princess.
‘Quelle delicatessel’ thought Princess Marya. ‘Can Amelie’ (Mademoiselle’s name) ‘suppose I could be jealous of her, and fail to appreciate her tenderness and devotion to me?’ She went up to Mademoiselle Bourienne and kissed her warmly. Anatole went to the little princess.
‘No, no, no! When your father writes me word that you are behaving well, I will give you my hand to kiss.’ And shaking her little finger at him, she went smiling out of the room.
V
They all went to their rooms, and except Anatole, who fell asleep the instant he got into bed, no one could get to sleep for a long while that night. ‘Can he possibly be—my husband, that stranger, that handsome, kind man; yes, he is certainly kind,’ thought Princess Marya, and a feeling of terror, such as she scarcely ever felt, came upon her. She was afraid to look round; it seemed to her that there was some one there— the devil, and he was that man with his white forehead, black eyebrows, and red lips.
She rang for her maid and asked her to sleep in her room.
Mademoiselle Bourienne walked up and down the winter garden for a long while that evening, in vain expectation of some one; at one moment she was smiling at that some one, the next, moved to tears by an imaginary reference to ma pauvrc mere reproaching her for her fall.
The little princess kept grumbling to her maid that her bed had not been properly made. She could not lie on her side nor on her face. She felt uncomfortable and ill at ease in every position. Her burden oppressed her, oppressed her more than ever that night, because Anatole’s presence had carried her vividly back to another time when it was not so, and she had been light and gay. She sat in a low chair in her night-cap and dressing-jacket. Katya, sleepy and dishevelled, for the third time beat and turned the heavy feather bed, murmuring something.
‘I told you it was all in lumps and hollows,’ the little princess repeated; ‘I should be glad enough to go to sleep, so it’s not my fault.’
And her voice quivered like a child’s when it is going to cry.
The old prince too could not sleep. Tihon, half asleep, heard him pacing angrily up and down and blowing his nose. The old prince felt as though he had been insulted through his daughter. The insult was
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the more bitter because it concerned not himself, but another, his daughter, whom he loved more than himself. He said to himself that he would think the whole matter over thoroughly and decide what was right and what must be done, but instead of doing so, he only worked up his irritation more and more.
