"Are you really going to the theater?" he said, trying not to
look at her.
"Why do you ask with such alarm?" she said, wounded again at his
not looking at her. "Why shouldn't I go?"
She appeared not to understand the motive of his words.
"Oh, of course, there's no reason whatever," he said, frowning.
"That's just what I say," she said, willfully refusing to see the
irony of his tone, and quietly turning back her long, perfumed
glove.
"Anna, for God's sake! what is the matter with you?" he said,
appealing to her exactly as once her husband had done.
"I don't understand what you are asking."
"You know that it's out of the question to go."
"Why so? I'm not going alone. Princess Varvara has gone to
dress, she is going with me."
He shrugged his shoulders with an air of perplexity and despair.
"But do you mean to say you don't know?..." he began.
"But I don't care to know!" she almost shrieked. "I don't care
to. Do I regret what I have done? No, no, no! If it were all
to do again from the beginning, it would be the same. For us,
for you and for me, there is only one thing that matters, whether
we love each other. Other people we need not consider. Why are
we living here apart and not seeing each other? Why can't I go?
I love you, and I don't care for anything," she said in Russian,
glancing at him with a peculiar gleam in her eyes that he could
not understand. "If you have not changed to me, why don't you
look at me?"
He looked at her. He saw all the beauty of her face and full
dress, always so becoming to her. But now her beauty and
elegance were just what irritated him.
"My feeling cannot change, you know, but I beg you, I entreat
you," he said again in French, with a note of tender supplication
in his voice, but with coldness in his eyes.
She did not hear his words, but she saw the coldness of his eyes,
and answered with irritation: "And I beg you to explain why I should not go."
"Because it might cause you..." he hesitated.
"I don't understand. Yashvin _n'est pas compromettant_, and
Princess Varvara is no worse than others. Oh, here she is!"