She was married to a very wealthy and very stupid man, who did absolutely nothing though he was on the board of some sort of charity institution and bore the title of Kammer junker .
She loathed her husband, but she had borne him two children — a boy and a girl; she had made up her mind not to have any more children.
As for Vena, she longed to have children, as many as possible, but for some reason she had none, and she morbidly and passionately adored her younger sister's pretty, anaemic children, always well-behaved and obedient, with pallid, mealy faces and curled doll hair of a flaxen colour.
Anna was all gay disorder and sweet, sometimes freakish contradictions.
She readily gave herself up to the most reckless flirting in all the capitals and health resorts of Europe, but she was never unfaithful to her husband, whom she, however, ridiculed contemptuously both to his face and behind his back. She was extravagant and very fond of gambling, dances, new sensations and exciting spectacles, and when abroad she would frequent cafes of doubtful repute. But she was also generously kind and deeply, sincerely religious — so much so that she had secretly become a Catholic.
Her back, bosom and shoulders were of rare beauty.
When she went to a grand ball she would bare herself far beyond the limits allowed by decorum or fashion, but it was said that under the low-cut dress she always wore a hair shirt.
Vera, on the otter hand, was rigidly plain-mannered, coldly, condescendingly amiable to all, and as aloof and composed as a queen.
Ill
"Oh, how nice it is here!
How very nice!" said Anna as she walked with swift small steps along the path beside her sister. "Let's sit for a while on the bench above the bluff, if you don't mind.
I haven't seen the sea for ages.
The air is so wonderful here — it cheers your heart to breathe it.
Last summer I made an amazing discovery in the Crimea, in Miskhor.
Do you know what surf water smells like?
Just imagine — it smells like mignonette."
Vera smiled affectionately.
"You always fancy things."
"But it does.
Once everybody laughed at me, I remember, when I said that moonlight had a kind of pink shade.
But a couple of days ago Boritsky — that artist who's doing my portrait — said that I was right and that artists have known about it for a long time."
"Is that artist your latest infatuation?"
"You always get queer ideas!" Anna laughed, then, stepping quickly to the edge of the bluff, which dropped in a sheer wall deep into the sea, she looked down and suddenly cried out in terror, starting back, her face pale.
"What a height!" Her voice was faint and tremulous. "When I look down from so high up it gives me a sort of sweet, nasty creeps, and my toes ache.
And yet I'm drawn to it!"
She was about to look down again, but her sister held her back.
"For heaven's sake, Anna dear!
I feel giddy myself when you do that.
Sit down, I beg you."
"All right, all right, I will.
But see how beautiful it is, how exhilarating — you just can't look enough.
If you knew how thankful I am to God for all the wonders he has wrought for us!"
Both fell to thinking for a moment.
The sea lay at rest far, far below.
The shore could not be seen from the bench, and that enhanced the feeling of the immensity and majesty of the sea.
The water was calm and friendly, and cheerfully blue, except for pale blue oblique stripes marking the currents, and on the horizon it changed to an intense blue.
Fishing boats, hardly discernible, were dozing motionless in the smooth water, not far from the shore.
And farther away a three-master, draped from top to bottom in white, shapely sails bellied out by the wind, seemed to be suspended in the air, making no headway.
"I see what you mean," said the elder sister thoughtfully, "but somehow I don't feel about it the way you do.
When I see the sea for the first time after a long interval, it excites and staggers me.
I feel as if I were looking at an enormous, solemn wonder I'd never seen before.
But afterwards, when I'm used to it, its flat emptiness begins to crush me.
I feel bored as I look at it, and I try not to look any more."
Anna smiled.
"What is it?" asked her sister.
"Last summer," said Anna slyly, "we rode in a big cavalcade from Yalta to Uch Kosh.
That's beyond the forester's house, above the falls.
At first we wandered into some mist, it was very damp and we couldn't see well, but we climbed higher and higher, up a steep path, between pine-trees.
Then the forest ended, and we were out of the mist.
Imagine a narrow foothold on a cliff, and a precipice below.