第100章

`Everything, everything!' Kitty assented.

`Well, there's really nothing of any consequence; only that Mikhail Alexeievich' (that was the artist's name) `had meant to leave earlier, and now he doesn't want to go away,' said Varenka, smiling.

`Go on, go on!' Kitty urged impatiently, looking somberly at Varenka.

`Well, and for some reason Anna Pavlovna told him that he didn't want to go because you are here. Of course, that was nonsense; but there was a dispute over it - over you. You know how irritable these sick people are.'

Kitty, scowling more than ever, kept silent, and Varenka went on speaking alone, trying to soften or soothe her, and seeing a storm coming - she did not know whether of tears or of words.

`So you'd better not go... You understand; you won't be offended?...'

`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...'

`I really didn't mean to hurt you,' said Varenka, smiling.

Peace was made. But with her father's coming all the world in which she had been living was transformed for Kitty. She did not give up everything she had learned, but she became aware that she had deceived herself in supposing she could be what she wanted to be. Her eyes were, it seemed, opened; she felt all the difficulty of maintaining herself without hypocrisy and self-conceit on the pinnacle to which she had wished to mount.

Moreover, she became aware of all the dreariness of the world of sorrow, of sick and dying people, in which she had been living. The efforts she had made to like it seemed to her intolerable, and she felt a longing to get back quickly into the fresh air, to Russia, to Ergushovo, where, as she knew from letters, her sister Dolly had already gone with her children.

But her affection for Varenka did not wane. Parting Kitty begged her to come to them in Russia.

`I'll come when you get married,' said Varenka.

`I shall never marry.'

`Well, then, I shall never come.'

`Well, then, I shall be married simply for that. Mind now, remember your promise,' said Kitty.

The doctor's prediction was fulfilled. Kitty returned home, to Russia, cured. She was not as gay and thoughtless as before, but she was serene. Her Moscow troubles had become a memory to her.