`And it serves me right! And it serves me right!' Kitty cried quickly, snatching the parasol out of Varenka's hand, and avoiding looking at her friend's face.

Varenka felt inclined to smile, looking at her friend's childish fury, but she was afraid of wounding her.

`How does it serve you right? I don't understand,' she said.

`It serves me right, because it was all sham; because it was all done on purpose, and not from the heart. What business had I to interfere with outsiders? And so it's come about that I'm the cause of a quarrel, and that I've done what nobody asked me to do. Because it was all a sham! A sham! A sham!...'

`A sham? With what object?' said Varenka gently.

`Oh, it's so idiotic! So hateful! There was no need whatever for me... Nothing but sham!' she said, opening and shutting the parasol.

`But with what object?'

`To seem better to people, to myself, to God; to deceive everyone. No! Now I won't descend to that. One could be bad; but anyway not a liar, not a cheat.'

`But who is a cheat?' said Varenka reproachfully. `You speak as if...'

But Kitty was in one of her gusts of fury, and she would not let her finish.

`I don't talk about you - not about you at all. You're perfection. Yes, yes, I know you're all perfection; but what am I to do if I'm bad? This would never have been if I weren't bad. So let me be what I am, but not to be a sham. What have I to do with Anna Pavlovna? Let them go their way, and me go mine. I can't be different.... And yet it's not that, it's not that.'

`What is it?' asked Varenka in bewilderment.

`Everything. I can't act except from the heart, and you act from principle. I simply liked you, but you most likely only wanted to save me, to improve me.'

`You are unjust,' said Varenka.

`But I'm not speaking of other people, I'm speaking of myself.'

`Kitty,' they heard her mother's voice, `come here, show papa your necklace.'

Kitty, with a haughty air, without making peace with her friend, took the necklace in a little box from the table and went to her mother.

`What's the matter? Why are you so red?' her mother and father said to her with one voice.

`Nothing,' she answered. `I'll be back directly,' and she ran back.

`She's still here,' she thought. `What am I to say to her? Oh, dear! What have I done, what have I said? Why was I rude to her? What am I to do? What am I to say to her?' thought Kitty, and she stopped in the doorway.

Varenka in her hat and with the parasol in her hands was sitting at a table examining the parasol spring which Kitty had broken. She lifted her head.

`Varenka, forgive me, do forgive me,' whispered Kitty, going up to her. `I don't remember what I said. I...'