Resurrection

"Oh, these everlasting disputes!" said old Korchagin, laughing,

and he pulled the napkin out of his waistcoat, noisily pushed

back his chair, which the footman instantly caught hold of, and

left the table.

Everybody rose after him, and went up to another table on which

stood glasses of scented water. They rinsed their mouths, then

resumed the conversation, interesting to no one.

"Don't you think so?" said Missy to Nekhludoff, calling for a

confirmation of the statement that nothing shows up a man's

character like a game. She noticed that preoccupied and, as it

seemed to her, dissatisfied look which she feared, and she wanted

to find out what had caused it.

"Really, I can't tell; I have never thought about it," Nekhludoff

answered.

"Will you come to mamma?" asked Missy.

"Yes, yes," he said, in a tone which plainly proved that he did

not want to go, and took out a cigarette.

She looked at him in silence, with a questioning look, and he

felt ashamed. "To come into a house and give the people the

dumps," he thought about himself; then, trying to be amiable,

said that he would go with pleasure if the princess would admit

him.

"Oh, yes! Mamma will be pleased. You may smoke there; and Ivan

Ivanovitch is also there."

The mistress of the house, Princess Sophia Vasilievna, was a

recumbent lady. It was the eighth year that, when visitors were

present, she lay in lace and ribbons, surrounded with velvet,

gilding, ivory, bronze, lacquer and flowers, never going out, and

only, as she put it, receiving intimate friends, i.e., those who

according to her idea stood out from the common herd.

Nekhludoff was admitted into the number of these friends because

he was considered clever, because his mother had been an intimate

friend of the family, and because it was desirable that Missy

should marry him.

Sophia Vasilievna's room lay beyond the large and the small

drawing-rooms. In the large drawing-room, Missy, who was in front

of Nekhludoff, stopped resolutely, and taking hold of the back of

a small green chair, faced him.

Missy was very anxious to get married, and as he was a suitable

match and she also liked him, she had accustomed herself to the

thought that he should be hers (not she his). To lose him would

be very mortifying. She now began talking to him in order to get

him to explain his intentions.

"I see something has happened," she said. "Tell me, what is the

matter with you?"

He remembered the meeting in the law court, and frowned and

blushed.

"Yes, something has happened," he said, wishing to be truthful;

"a very unusual and serious event."

"What is it, then? Can you not tell me what it is?" She was

pursuing her aim with that unconscious yet obstinate cunning

often observable in the mentally diseased.