Stretching and lying snug in her bed, she recalled her meeting yesterday with the doctor and all the thoughts with which she had gone to sleep the night before:  she remembered she was unhappy.  Then she thought of her husband living in Petersburg, her stewards, doctors, neighbours, the officials of her acquaintance . . . a long procession of familiar masculine faces passed before her imagination.  She smiled and thought, if only these people could see into her heart and understand her, they would all be at her feet.

At a quarter past eleven she called her maid.

“Help me to dress, Dasha,” she said languidly.  “But go first and tell them to get out the horses.  I must set off for Klavdia Nikolaevna’s.”

Going out to get into the carriage, she blinked at the glaring daylight and laughed with pleasure:  it was a wonderfully fine day!  As she scanned from her half-closed eyes the monks who had gathered round the steps to see her off, she nodded graciously and said: 

“Good-bye, my friends!  Till the day after tomorrow.”

It was an agreeable surprise to her that the doctor was with the monks by the steps.  His face was pale and severe.

“Princess,” he said with a guilty smile, taking off his hat, “I’ve been waiting here a long time to see you.  Forgive me, for God’s sake. . . .  I was carried away yesterday by an evil, vindictive feeling and I talked . . . nonsense.  In short, I beg your pardon.”

The princess smiled graciously, and held out her hand for him to kiss.  He kissed it, turning red.

Trying to look like a bird, the princess fluttered into the carriage and nodded in all directions.  There was a gay, warm, serene feeling in her heart, and she felt herself that her smile was particularly soft and friendly.  As the carriage rolled towards the gates, and afterwards along the dusty road past huts and gardens, past long trains of waggons and strings of pilgrims on their way to the monastery, she still screwed up her eyes and smiled softly.  She was thinking there was no higher bliss than to bring warmth, light, and joy wherever one went, to forgive injuries, to smile graciously on one’s enemies.  The peasants she passed bowed to her, the carriage rustled softly, clouds of dust rose from under the wheels and floated over the golden rye, and it seemed to the princess that her body was swaying not on carriage cushions but on clouds, and that she herself was like a light, transparent little cloud. . . .

“How happy I am!” she murmured, shutting her eyes.  “How happy I am!”

THE CHEMIST’S WIFE

THE little town of B——­, consisting of two or three crooked streets, was sound asleep.  There was a complete stillness in the motionless air.  Nothing could be heard but far away, outside the town no doubt, the barking of a dog in a thin, hoarse tenor.  It was close upon daybreak.