Anna Karenina - Part 6

"If you would care to look at the hospital, and are not tired,

indeed, it's not far. Shall we go?" he said, glancing into her

face to convince himself that she was not bored. "Are you

coming, Anna?" he turned to her.

"We will come, won't we?" she said, addressing Sviazhsky. "_Mais

il ne faut pas laisser le pauvre Veslovsky et Tushkevitch se

morfondre là dans le bateau._ We must send and tell them."

"Yes, this is a monument he is setting up here," said Anna,

turning to Dolly with that sly smile of comprehension with which

she had previously talked about the hospital.

"Oh, it's a work of real importance!" said Sviazhsky. But to

show he was not trying to ingratiate himself with Vronsky, he

promptly added some slightly critical remarks.

"I wonder, though, count," he said, "that while you do so much

for the health of the peasants, you take so little interest in

the schools."

"_C'est devenu tellement commun les écoles,_" said Vronsky. "You

understand it's not on that account, but it just happens so, my

interest has been diverted elsewhere. This way then to the

hospital," he said to Darya Alexandrovna, pointing to a turning

out of the avenue.

The ladies put up their parasols and turned into the side path.

After going down several turnings, and going through a little

gate, Darya Alexandrovna saw standing on rising ground before her

a large pretentious-looking red building, almost finished. The

iron roof, which was not yet painted, shone with dazzling

brightness in the sunshine. Beside the finished building another

had been begun, surrounded by scaffolding. Workmen in aprons,

standing on scaffolds, were laying bricks, pouring mortar out of

vats, and smoothing it with trowels.

"How quickly work gets done with you!" said Sviazhsky. "When I

was here last time the roof was not on."

"By the autumn it will all be ready. Inside almost everything is

done," said Anna.

"And what's this new building?"

"That's the house for the doctor and the dispensary," answered

Vronsky, seeing the architect in a short jacket coming towards

him; and excusing himself to the ladies, he went to meet him.

Going round a hole where the workmen were slaking lime, he stood

still with the architect and began talking rather warmly.

"The front is still too low," he said to Anna, who had asked what

was the matter.

"I said the foundation ought to be raised," said Anna.