"Why, I suppose you used to pay calls before you were married, didn't you?"
"Yes, I did, but I always felt ashamed, and now I'm so out of the way of it that, by Jove! I'd sooner go two days running without my dinner than pay this call!
One's so ashamed!
I feel all the while that they're annoyed, that they're saying, 'What has he come for?'"
"No, they won't.
I'll answer for that," said Kitty, looking into his face with a laugh.
She took his hand. "Well, good-bye....
Do go, please."
He was just going out after kissing his wife's hand, when she stopped him.
"Kostya, do you know I've only fifty roubles left?"
"Oh, all right, I'll go to the bank and get some.
How much?" he said, with the expression of dissatisfaction she knew so well.
"No, wait a minute." She held his hand. "Let's talk about it, it worries me.
I seem to spend nothing unnecessary, but money seems to fly away simply.
We don't manage well, somehow."
"Oh, it's all right," he said with a little cough, looking at her from under his brows.
That cough she knew well.
It was a sign of intense dissatisfaction, not with her, but with himself.
He certainly was displeased not at so much money being spent, but at being reminded of what he, knowing something was unsatisfactory, wanted to forget.
"I have told Sokolov to sell the wheat, and to borrow an advance on the mill.
We shall have money enough in any case."
"Yes, but I'm afraid that altogether..."
"Oh, it's all right, all right," he repeated. "Well, good-bye, darling."
"No, I'm really sorry sometimes that I listened to mamma.
How nice it would have been in the country!
As it is, I'm worrying you all, and we're wasting our money."
"Not at all, not at all.
Not once since I've been married have I said that things could have been better than they are...."
"Truly?" she said, looking into his eyes.
He had said it without thinking, simply to console her.
But when he glanced at her and saw those sweet truthful eyes fastened questioningly on him, he repeated it with his whole heart.
"I was positively forgetting her," he thought.
And he remembered what was before them, so soon to come.
"Will it be soon?
How do you feel?" he whispered, taking her two hands.
"I have so often thought so, that now I don't think about it or know anything about it."
"And you're not frightened?"
She smiled contemptuously.
"Not the least little bit," she said.
"Well, if anything happens, I shall be at Katavasov's."
"No, nothing will happen, and don't think about it.
I'm going for a walk on the boulevard with papa.
We're going to see Dolly.
I shall expect you before dinner.
Oh, yes!
Do you know that Dolly's position is becoming utterly impossible?
She's in debt all round; she hasn't a penny.
We were talking yesterday with mamma and Arseny" (this was her sister's husband Lvov), "and we determined to send you with him to talk to Stiva.
It's really unbearable.
One can't speak to papa about it....