“What’s the matter?  You are ill?” he said to her in French, going up to her.  He would have run to her, but remembering that there might be spectators, he looked round towards the balcony door, and reddened a little, as he always reddened, feeling that he had to be afraid and be on his guard.

“No, I’m quite well,” she said, getting up and pressing his outstretched hand tightly.  “I did not expect...thee.”

“Mercy! what cold hands!” he said.

“You startled me,” she said.  “I’m alone, and expecting Seryozha; he’s out for a walk; they’ll come in from this side.”

But, in spite of her efforts to be calm, her lips were quivering.

“Forgive me for coming, but I couldn’t pass the day without seeing you,” he went on, speaking French, as he always did to avoid using the stiff Russian plural form, so impossibly frigid between them, and the dangerously intimate singular.

“Forgive you?  I’m so glad!”

“But you’re ill or worried,” he went on, not letting go her hands and bending over her.  “What were you thinking of?”

“Always the same thing,” she said, with a smile.

She spoke the truth.  If ever at any moment she had been asked what she was thinking of, she could have answered truly:  of the same thing, of her happiness and her unhappiness.  She was thinking, just when he came upon her, of this:  why was it, she wondered, that to others, to Betsy (she knew of her secret connection with Tushkevitch) it was all easy, while to her it was such torture?  Today this thought gained special poignancy from certain other considerations.  She asked him about the races.  He answered her questions, and, seeing that she was agitated, trying to calm her, he began telling her in the simplest tone the details of his preparations for the races.

“Tell him or not tell him?” she thought, looking into his quiet, affectionate eyes.  “He is so happy, so absorbed in his races that he won’t understand as he ought, he won’t understand all the gravity of this fact to us.”

“But you haven’t told me what you were thinking of when I came in,” he said, interrupting his narrative; “please tell me!”

She did not answer, and, bending her head a little, she looked inquiringly at him from under her brows, her eyes shining under their long lashes.  Her hand shook as it played with a leaf she had picked.  He saw it, and his face expressed that utter subjection, that slavish devotion, which had done so much to win her.

“I see something has happened.  Do you suppose I can be at peace, knowing you have a trouble I am not sharing?  Tell me, for God’s sake,” he repeated imploringly.

“Yes, I shan’t be able to forgive him if he does not realize all the gravity of it.  Better not tell; why put him to the proof?” she thought, still staring at him in the same way, and feeling the hand that held the leaf was trembling more and more.