The sisters, though they were in a most festive mood, glanced constantly at Aglaya and the prince, who were walking ahead of them; it was clear that their little sister had set them a great riddle.
Prince Shch. kept trying to strike up a conversation with Lizaveta Prokofyevna about unrelated things, perhaps in order to distract her, but she found him terribly tiresome.
Her thoughts seemed quite scattered, she gave inappropriate answers and sometimes did not answer at all.
But Aglaya Ivanovna's riddles were not yet ended for that evening.
The last one fell to the prince's lot.
When they had gone about a hundred steps from the dacha, Aglaya said in a rapid half whisper to her stubbornly silent escort:
"Look to the right."
The prince looked.
"Look closer.
Do you see the bench in the park, where those three big trees are . . . the green bench?"
The prince answered that he did.
"Do you like the setting?
Sometimes I come early, at seven o'clock, when everyone is still asleep, to sit there by myself."
The prince murmured that it was a wonderful setting.
"And now go away from me, I don't want to walk arm in arm with you anymore.
Or better, let's walk arm in arm, but don't say a word to me.
I want to think alone to myself. . ."
The warning was in any case unnecessary: the prince would certainly not have uttered a single word all the way even without orders.
His heart began to pound terribly when he heard about the bench.
After a moment he thought better of it and, in shame, drove away his absurd notion.
As is known and as everyone at least affirms, the public that gathers at the Pavlovsk vauxhall on weekdays is "more select" than on Sundays and holidays, when "all sorts of people" arrive from the city.
The dresses are not festive but elegant.
The custom is to get together and listen to music.
The orchestra, which may indeed be one of our best garden orchestras, plays new things.
The decency and decorum are extreme, in spite of a certain generally familial and even intimate air.
The acquaintances, all of them dacha people, get together to look each other over.
Many do it with genuine pleasure and come only for that; but there are also those who come just for the music.
Scandals are extraordinarily rare, though, incidentally, they do occur even on weekdays.
But, then, there's no doing without them.
This time the evening was lovely, and there was a good-sized audience.
All the places near the orchestra were taken.
Our company sat down in chairs a little to one side, close to the far left-hand door of the vauxhall.
The crowd and the music revived Lizaveta Prokofyevna somewhat and distracted the young ladies; they managed to exchange glances with some of their acquaintances and to nod their heads amiably to others from afar; managed to look over the dresses, to notice some oddities, discuss them, and smile mockingly.
Evgeny Pavlovich also bowed rather often.
People already paid attention to Aglaya and the prince, who were still together.
Soon some young men of their acquaintance came over to the mama and the young ladies; two or three stayed to talk; they were all friends of Evgeny Pavlovich.
Among them was one young and very handsome officer, very gay, very talkative; he hastened to strike up a conversation with Aglaya and tried as hard as he could to attract her attention.
Aglaya was very gracious with him and laughed easily.
Evgeny Pavlovich asked the prince's permission to introduce him to this friend; the prince barely understood what they wanted to do with him, but the introductions were made, the two men bowed and shook hands with each other.
Evgeny Pavlovich's friend asked a question, but the prince seemed not to answer it, or muttered something to himself so strangely that the officer gave him a very intent look, then glanced at Evgeny Pavlovich, realized at once why he had thought up this acquaintance, smiled faintly, and turned again to Aglaya.
Evgeny Pavlovich alone noticed that Aglaya unexpectedly blushed at that.
The prince did not even notice that other people were talking and paying court to Aglaya; he even all but forgot at moments that he was sitting next to her.
Sometimes he wanted to go away somewhere, to disappear from there completely, and he would even have liked some dark, deserted place, only so that he could be alone with his thoughts and no one would know where he was.
Or at least to be in his own home, on the terrace, but so that nobody else was there, neither Lebedev nor his children; to throw himself on his sofa, bury his face in his pillow, and lie there like that for a day, a night, another day.
At moments he imagined the mountains, and precisely one familiar spot in the mountains that he always liked to remember and where he had liked to walk when he still lived there, and to look down from there on the village, on the white thread of the waterfall barely glittering below, on the white clouds, on the abandoned old castle.
Oh, how he wanted to be there now and to think about one thing—oh! all his life only about that—it would be enough for a thousand years!
And let them, let them forget all about him here.
Oh, it was even necessary, even better, that they not know him at all, and that this whole vision be nothing but a dream.
And wasn't it all the same whether it was a dream or a reality?
Sometimes he would suddenly begin studying Aglaya and for five minutes could not tear his gaze from her face; but his gaze was all too strange: it seemed he was looking at her as if at an object a mile away, or as if at her portrait and not at herself.