There were people of the most diverse characters and views, so that the motives for becoming intimate with this one or that one were not the same.
Nevertheless, they were all integral parts of her circle, so that there really could be no question of motives.
Her life had become like the gate to an inn, at which every gay, wealthy, young man could knock and claim entrance.
Clearly it was not a matter of selecting a congenial company, but of fitting into any kind of company so as not to die of ennui.
Her "sacred art" had really thrown her into a mire, but her head was turned, and she did not notice her position.
Neither the dirty faces of the porters nor the slimy, dilapidated stage properties, nor the din, stench, and noise of the hotels and inns, nor the obscene behavior of her admirers—none of these things produced a sobering effect.
She did not even notice that she was always in the society of men only, and that there was a permanent barrier between her and the women of established position.
The visit to Golovliovo sobered her for a moment.
In the morning, almost immediately after her arrival, she began to feel uneasy.
Highly impressionable, she quickly absorbed new sensations and quickly adapted herself to new situations.
Consequently, as soon as she reached Golovliovo, she felt herself a "lady."
She suddenly recalled that she had something of her own: her own home, her own graves. She became filled with a desire to see herself in her former surroundings, to breathe the air from which she had only recently fled.
But her impression was immediately dispelled by contact with the reality she found there.
Her experience in this was like that of a person who enters with a smile among friends he has not seen for a long time, and suddenly notices that everybody responds to his cordial greetings coldly.
The nasty glances Yudushka cast at her figure reminded her that her position was questionable and not easy to change.
When she remained alone, after the naive questions of the Pogorelka servants, after the pious sighs of warning of the Pogorelka priest and his wife, after the fresh sermons of Yudushka, when she examined her impressions of the day at leisure, she became convinced that the former "lady" was gone forever and that from now on she was only an actress in a miserable provincial theatre, and the position of a Russian actress was not far removed from that of a street woman.
Until now she had lived as if in a dream.
She would go out half-naked in Fair Helen, would appear intoxicated in Pericola, would sing all sorts of indecencies in the Episodes from the Life of the Duchess of Herolstein, and would even regret that it was not the custom to represent la chose and l'amour on the stage, imagining how enticingly her hips would quiver and how alluring her every movement would be.
But it had never occurred to her to give earnest thought to what she was doing.
She had only tried to make everything appear "charming" and chic and at the same time please the army officers of the town regiment.
But what it all meant, and what the sensation was that her quivering hips produced in the army officers, she did not consider.
The army officers were the element that set the tone for the town, and she realized that her success depended upon them.
They would intrude behind the scenes, would unceremoniously knock at the door of her dressing-room when she was yet half-clad, would address her in endearing terms—and she looked upon it all as a simple formality, an inevitable feature incidental to her profession. All she asked herself was whether she rendered a feature "charmingly" or not.
Until now she had not thought of her body or her soul as being public, but for a moment feeling herself a "lady" again, she looked on her past in utter disgust and abhorrence, as if she had been stripped naked and were being exposed on the public square; as if all those vile creatures infected with the odors of wine and the stable had suddenly gripped her in their embrace, as her body felt the contact of hands moist with perspiration, of slabbery lips and the dull, greedy, brutal eyes that lingered animal-like over the curved lines of her nude body.
Where was she to go? How was she to throw off that accumulated load, which began to leave its mark on her shoulders?
The question tossed in her head desperately—tossed, indeed, for she neither found nor, as a matter of fact, sought an answer.
This stay in Golovliovo, too, was a kind of dream. Her past life had been a dream, and her present awakening was a dream.
Something had made the little girl ill at ease, and she had become sentimental—that was all.
It would pass.
There are pleasant moments and there are unpleasant ones—that is how they go.
Both merely glide past but do not alter the course of life once determined upon.
To give life a new course, to divert its channel, one needs not only moral but also physical courage.
It is almost the same as suicide.
Before attempting suicide a man may denounce his life, he may be certain that death is the only salvation, yet the weapon of death trembles in his hands, the knife slides harmlessly over the neck, the bullet, instead of striking the forehead, hits lower and only cripples.
That is what happened in Anninka's case.
She had to kill her former life, but though killing it, she herself had to remain alive.
The "nothingness" that in regular suicide is attained by merely pressing the trigger, was to be attained in the peculiar suicide called rejuvenation only after many stern almost ascetic efforts. A pampered person already undermined by the habit of easy living will turn dizzy at the mere perspective of a rejuvenation.
He instinctively turns his head away and shuts his eyes. Then filled with shame and accusing himself of lack of courage, he will take the easy way again.
Oh, the life of toil is a glorious thing!
Yet none but strong people can live it and those who are destined for it because of original sin.
They are the only ones it does not frighten; the former because they realize the significance and resources of toil and can find pleasure in it; the latter, because to them toil is first a duty, then a habit.
Anninka did not think of remaining at Golovliovo or Pogorelka for even a moment. In this she was fortified by the business routine of her circumstances, to which she clung instinctively.
She had been given leave of absence and had arranged her schedule ahead of time, even designating the day on which she was to leave Golovliovo.
For people of weak wills the external checks upon their life considerably lighten its burdens.
In difficult cases they cling to them instinctively and use them as a justification for their acts.
Anninka decided to leave Golovliovo as soon as possible, and if uncle persisted in his coaxing, to counter him by invoking the necessity of reporting for duty on the set date.
When she arose in the morning she walked leisurely through all the rooms of the vast Golovliovo mansion.
She found them dreary, uninviting, deserted. There was an air of decay and haunting unfriendliness about them.
The thought of living there indefinitely quite frightened her.
"Never!" she kept repeating in a state of inexplicable agitation, "Never!"