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Anna Karenina - Part 3

Page 65

Sappho smoking a cigarette went off into the garden with the two

young men. Betsy and Stremov remained at the tea-table.

"What, bored!" said Betsy. "Sappho says they did enjoy

themselves tremendously at your house last night."

"Ah, how dreary it all was!" said Liza Merkalova. "We all drove

back to my place after the races. And always the same people,

always the same. Always the same thing. We lounged about on

sofas all the evening. What is there to enjoy in that? No; do

tell me how you manage never to be bored?" she said, addressing

Anna again. "One has but to look at you and one sees, here's a

woman who may be happy or unhappy, but isn't bored. Tell me how

you do it?"

"I do nothing," answered Anna, blushing at these searching

questions.

"That's the best way," Stremov put in. Stremov was a man of

fifty, partly gray, but still vigorous-looking, very ugly, but

with a characteristic and intelligent face. Liza Merkalova was

his wife's niece, and he spent all his leisure hours with her.

On meeting Anna Karenina, as he was Alexey Alexandrovitch's enemy

in the government, he tried, like a shrewd man and a man of the

world, to be particularly cordial with her, the wife of his

enemy.

"'Nothing,'" he put in with a subtle smile, "that's the very best

way. I told you long ago," he said, turning to Liza Merkalova,

"that if you don't want to be bored, you mustn't think you're

going to be bored. It's just as you mustn't be afraid of not

being able to fall asleep, if you're afraid of sleeplessness.

That's just what Anna Arkadyevna has just said."

"I should be very glad if I had said it, for it's not only

clever but true," said Anna, smiling.

"No, do tell me why it is one can't go to sleep, and one can't

help being bored?"

"To sleep well one ought to work, and to enjoy oneself one ought

to work too."

"What am I to work for when my work is no use to anybody? And I

can't and won't knowingly make a pretense about it."

"You're incorrigible," said Stremov, not looking at her, and he

spoke again to Anna. As he rarely met Anna, he could say nothing

but commonplaces to her, but he said those commonplaces as to

when she was returning to Petersburg, and how fond Countess Lidia

Ivanovna was of her, with an expression which suggested that he

longed with his whole soul to please her and show his regard for

her and even more than that.

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