Anna Karenina - Part 5

"Coming, coming!"

He went in to his wife.

"Come, Sasha, don't be cross!" he said, smiling timidly and

affectionately at her. "You were to blame. I was to blame.

I'll make it all right." And having made peace with his wife he

put on an olive-green overcoat with a velvet collar and a hat,

and went towards his studio. The successful figure he had

already forgotten. Now he was delighted and excited at the visit

of these people of consequence, Russians, who had come in their

carriage.

Of his picture, the one that stood now on his easel, he had at

the bottom of his heart one conviction--that no one had ever

painted a picture like it. He did not believe that his picture

was better than all the pictures of Raphael, but he knew that

what he tried to convey in that picture, no one ever had

conveyed. This he knew positively, and had known a long while,

ever since he had begun to paint it. But other people's

criticisms, whatever they might be, had yet immense consequence

in his eyes, and they agitated him to the depths of his soul.

Any remark, the most insignificant, that showed that the critic

saw even the tiniest part of what he saw in the picture, agitated

him to the depths of his soul. He always attributed to his

critics a more profound comprehension than he had himself, and

always expected from them something he did not himself see in the

picture. And often in their criticisms he fancied that he had

found this.

He walked rapidly to the door of his studio, and in spite of his

excitement he was struck by the soft light on Anna's figure as

she stood in the shade of the entrance listening to

Golenishtchev, who was eagerly telling her something, while she

evidently wanted to look round at the artist. He was himself

unconscious how, as he approached them, he seized on this

impression and absorbed it, as he had the chin of the shopkeeper

who had sold him the cigars, and put it away somewhere to be

brought out when he wanted it. The visitors, not agreeably

impressed beforehand by Golenishtchev's account of the artist,

were still less so by his personal appearance. Thick-set and of

middle height, with nimble movements, with his brown hat,

olive-green coat and narrow trousers--though wide trousers had

been a long while in fashion,--most of all, with the ordinariness

of his broad face, and the combined expression of timidity and

anxiety to keep up his dignity, Mihailov made an unpleasant

impression.