When Darya Alexandrovna lay in bed that night, as soon as she
closed her eyes, she saw Vassenka Veslovsky flying about the
croquet ground.
During the game Darya Alexandrovna was not enjoying herself. She
did not like the light tone of raillery that was kept up all the
time between Vassenka Veslovsky and Anna, and the unnaturalness
altogether of grown-up people, all alone without children,
playing at a child's game. But to avoid breaking up the party
and to get through the time somehow, after a rest she joined the
game again, and pretended to be enjoying it. All that day it
seemed to her as though she were acting in a theater with actors
cleverer than she, and that her bad acting was spoiling the whole
performance. She had come with the intention of staying two
days, if all went well. But in the evening, during the game, she
made up her mind that she would go home next day. The maternal
cares and worries, which she had so hated on the way, now, after
a day spent without them, struck her in quite another light, and
tempted her back to them.
When, after evening tea and a row by night in the boat, Darya
Alexandrovna went alone to her room, took off her dress, and
began arranging her thin hair for the night, she had a great
sense of relief.
It was positively disagreeable to her to think that Anna was
coming to see her immediately. She longed to be alone with her
own thoughts.