He stood leaning against the doorpost, his eyes fixed on his wife, Anna Pavlovna, a little brunette of thirty, with a long nose and a pointed chin.  Tightly laced, with her face carefully powdered, she danced without pausing for breath—­danced till she was ready to drop exhausted.  But though she was exhausted in body, her spirit was inexhaustible. . . .  One could see as she danced that her thoughts were with the past, that faraway past when she used to dance at the “College for Young Ladies,” dreaming of a life of luxury and gaiety, and never doubting that her husband was to be a prince or, at the worst, a baron.

The tax-collector watched, scowling with spite. . . .

It was not jealousy he was feeling.  He was ill-humoured—­first, because the room was taken up with dancing and there was nowhere he could play a game of cards; secondly, because he could not endure the sound of wind instruments; and, thirdly, because he fancied the officers treated the civilians somewhat too casually and disdainfully.  But what above everything revolted him and moved him to indignation was the expression of happiness on his wife’s face.

“It makes me sick to look at her!” he muttered.  “Going on for forty, and nothing to boast of at any time, and she must powder her face and lace herself up!  And frizzing her hair!  Flirting and making faces, and fancying she’s doing the thing in style!  Ugh! you’re a pretty figure, upon my soul!”

Anna Pavlovna was so lost in the dance that she did not once glance at her husband.

“Of course not!  Where do we poor country bumpkins come in!” sneered the tax-collector.

“We are at a discount now. . . .  We’re clumsy seals, unpolished provincial bears, and she’s the queen of the ball!  She has kept enough of her looks to please even officers. . .  They’d not object to making love to her, I dare say!”

During the mazurka the tax-collector’s face twitched with spite.  A black-haired officer with prominent eyes and Tartar cheekbones danced the mazurka with Anna Pavlovna.  Assuming a stern expression, he worked his legs with gravity and feeling, and so crooked his knees that he looked like a jack-a-dandy pulled by strings, while Anna Pavlovna, pale and thrilled, bending her figure languidly and turning her eyes up, tried to look as though she scarcely touched the floor, and evidently felt herself that she was not on earth, not at the local club, but somewhere far, far away—­in the clouds.  Not only her face but her whole figure was expressive of beatitude . . . .  The tax-collector could endure it no longer; he felt a desire to jeer at that beatitude, to make Anna Pavlovna feel that she had forgotten herself, that life was by no means so delightful as she fancied now in her excitement. . . .

“You wait; I’ll teach you to smile so blissfully,” he muttered.  “You are not a boarding-school miss, you are not a girl.  An old fright ought to realise she is a fright!”