an old woman’s privileges.” She paused, as women always do pause, in anticipation of something, after speaking of their age. “If you marry, it’s a different matter.” And she united them in one glance. Pierre did not look at Ellen, nor she at him. But she was still as terribly close to him.

He muttered something and blushed.

After Pierre had gone home, it was a long while before he could get to sleep; he kept pondering on what was happening to him. What was happening? Nothing. Simply he had grasped the fact that a woman, whom he had known as a child, of whom he had said, without giving her a thought, “Yes, she’s nice- looking,” when he had been told she was a beauty, he had grasped the fact that that woman might belong to him. “But she’s stupid, I used to say myself that she was stupid,” he thought. “There is something nasty in the feeling she excites in me, something not legitimate. I have been told that her brother, Anatole, was in love with her, and she in love with him, that there was a regular scandal, and that’s why Anatole was sent away. Her brother is Ippolit.…Her father is Prince Vassily.…That’s bad,” he mused; and at the very moment that he was reflecting thus (the reflections were not followed out to the end) he caught himself smiling, and became conscious that another series of reflections had risen to the surface across the first, that he was at the same time meditating on her worthlessness, and dreaming of how she would be his wife, how she might love him, how she might become quite different, and how all he had thought and heard about her might be untrue. And again he saw her, not as the daughter of Prince Vassily, but saw her whole body, only veiled by her grey gown. “But, no, why didn’t that idea ever occur to me before?” And again he told himself that it was impossible, that there would be something nasty, unnatural, as it seemed to him, and dishonourable in this marriage. He recalled her past words and looks, and the words and looks of people, who had seen them together. He remembered the words and looks of Anna Pavlovna, when she had spoken about his house, he recollected thousands of such hints from Prince Vassily and other people, and he was overwhelmed with terror that he might have bound himself in some way to do a thing obviously wrong, and not what he ought to do. But at the very time that he was expressing this to himself, in another part of his mind her image floated to the surface in all its womanly beauty.


  By PanEris using Melati.

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