They talked of the health of the countess, of common acquaintances, ” the latest news of the war, and when the ten minutes required by ropriety had elapsed, Nikolay got up to say good-bye.
With the aid of Mademoiselle Bourienne, Frincess Marya had kept o the conversation very well. But at the very last moment, just when he 'as getting up, she was so weary of talking of what did not interest her, ad she was so absorbed in wondering why to her alone so little joy had een vouchsafed in life, that in a fit of abstraction, she sat motionless.
gazing straight before her with her luminous eyes, and not noticing th he was getting up.
Nikoiay looked at her, and anxious to appear not to notice her a straction, he said a few words to Mademoiselle Bourienne, and aga glanced at the princess. She was sitting in the same immovable pose, ai there was a look of suffering on her soft face. He felt suddenly sorry f her, and vaguely conscious that he might be the cause of the sadness 1 saw in her face. He longed to help her, to say something pleasant to he but he could not think what to say to her.
‘Good-bye, princess,’ he said. She started, flushed, and sighed heavil
‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ she said, as though waking from sleep. ‘Ye are going already, count; well, good-bye! Oh, the cushion for tl countess?’
‘Wait a minute, I will fetch it,’ said Mademoiselle Bourienne, and si left the room.
They were both silent, glancing at each other now and then.
‘Yes, princess,’ said Nikolay at last, with a mournful smile, ‘it seen not long ago, but how much has happened since the first time we met; Bogutcharovo. We all seemed in such trouble then, but I would give great deal to have that time back . . . and there’s no bringing it back
Princess Marya was looking intently at him with her luminous eyes,;! he said that. She seemed trying to divine the secret import of his word which would make clear his feeling towards her.
‘Yes, yes,’ she said, ‘but you have no need to regret the past, coun ; As I conceive of your life now, you will always think of it with sati: faction, because the self-sacrifice in which you are now . . .’
‘I cannot accept your praises,’ he interrupted hurriedly; ‘on the coi trary, I am always reproaching myself; but it is an uninteresting an cheerless subject.’
And again the stiff and cold expression came back into his face. Bi Princess Marya saw in him again now the man she had known and lovet and it was to that man only she was speaking now.
‘I thought you would allow me to say that,’ she said. ‘I have been sue intimate friends with you . . . and with your family, and I thought yo would not feel my sympathy intrusive; but I made a mistake,’ she saic Her voice suddenly shook. ‘I don’t know why,’ she went on, recoverin' herself, ‘you used to be different, and . . .’
‘There are thousands of reasons why’ (He laid special stress on th word why.) ‘I thank you, princess,’ he added softly. ‘It is sometime hard . . .’
‘So that is why! That is why!’ an inner voice was saying in Princes Marya’s soul. ‘Yes, it was not only that gay, kind, and frank gaze, nc only that handsome exterior I loved in him; I divined his noble, firir and self-sacrificing soul,’ she said to herself.
‘Yes, he is poor now, and I am rich . . . Yes, it is only that . . Yes, if it were not for that . . .’ And recalling all his former tenderness
