"Why are you looking at me like that, Prince?" she said suddenly, interrupting her merry conversation and laughter with those around her.
"I'm afraid of you; I keep thinking you want to reach your hand out and touch my face with your finger, in order to feel it.
Isn't it true, Evgeny Pavlych, that he looks like that?"
The prince listened, seeming to be surprised that he was being addressed, realized it, though he may not quite have understood, did not reply, but, seeing that she and all the others were laughing, suddenly extended his mouth and began to laugh himself.
The laughter increased around him; the officer, who must have been a man who laughed easily, simply burst with laughter.
Aglaya suddenly whispered wrathfully to herself:
"Idiot!"
"Lord!
Can she really . . . such a ... is she going completely crazy?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna rasped to herself.
"It's a joke.
It's the same kind of joke as with the 'poor knight,' " Alexandra whispered firmly in her ear, "and nothing more!
She's poking fun at him again, in her own way.
Only the joke has gone too far; it must be stopped, maman!
Earlier she was clowning like an actress, frightening us for the fun of it . . ."
"It's a good thing she landed on such an idiot," Lizaveta Prokofyevna whispered to her.
Her daughter's observation made her feel better all the same.
The prince, however, heard that he had been called an idiot, and gave a start, but not because he had been called an idiot.
The "idiot" he forgot at once.
But in the crowd, not far from where he was sitting, somewhere to the side—he would not have been able to show in what precise place and in what spot—a face flashed, a pale face with dark, curly hair, with a familiar, a very familiar, smile and gaze—flashed and disappeared.
It might well have been that he only imagined it; of the whole apparition he was left with the impression of the crooked smile, the eyes, and the pale green, foppish tie that the gentleman who flashed was wearing.
Whether this gentleman disappeared in the crowd or slipped into the vaux-hall, the prince also could not have determined.
But a moment later he suddenly began looking quickly and uneasily around him; this first apparition might be the herald and forerunner of a second.
That was surely the case.
Could he have forgotten the possibility of a meeting when they set out for the vauxhall?
True, as he walked to the vauxhall, he seemed not at all aware that he was going there—he was in such a state.
If he had been or could have been more attentive, he might have noticed a quarter of an hour ago that Aglaya, every so often and also as if uneasily, glanced furtively about, as though looking for something around her.
Now, when his uneasiness had become quite noticeable, Aglaya's agitation and uneasiness also grew, and each time he looked behind him, she almost at once looked around as well.
The resolution of their anxiety soon followed.
From the same side door to the vauxhall near which the prince and all the Epanchin company had placed themselves, a whole crowd, at least ten people, suddenly emerged.
At the head of the crowd were three women; two of them were remarkably good-looking, and there was nothing strange in so many admirers following after them.
But both the admirers and the women—all this was something peculiar, something quite unlike the rest of the public gathered for the music.
Nearly everyone noticed them at once, but the greater part tried to pretend that they had not seen them at all, and perhaps only some of the young people smiled at them, commenting to each other in low voices.
Not to see them at all was impossible; they made themselves conspicuous, talked loudly, laughed.
One might suppose that many of them were drunk, though by the look of it some were smartly and elegantly dressed; but alongside them there were rather strange-looking people, in strange clothes, with strangely inflamed faces; there were several military men among them; not all of them were young; some were dressed comfortably in loose and elegantly made clothes, with signet rings and cuff links, in magnificent, pitch-black wigs and side-whiskers, and with a particularly noble, though somewhat squeamish, expression on their faces—the sort of people, however, who are avoided like the plague in society.
Among our suburban societies, of course, there are some that are distinguished by an extraordinary decorum and enjoy a particularly good reputation; but even the most cautious person cannot protect himself at every moment against a brick falling from a neighboring house.
This brick was now preparing to fall upon the decorous public that had gathered for the music.
To pass from the vauxhall to the green where the orchestra was playing, one had to go down three steps.
The crowd stopped just at these steps; they did not venture to go down, but one of the women stepped forward; only two of her retinue dared to follow her.
One was a rather modest-looking middle-aged man, of decent appearance in all respects, but having the air of a confirmed old bachelor, that is, one of those who never know anybody and whom nobody knows.
The other one not to lag behind his lady was a complete ragamuffin of the most ambiguous appearance.
No one else followed the eccentric lady; but, going down, she did not even turn to look back, as if it decidedly made no difference to her whether she was followed or not.
She laughed and talked as loudly as before; she was dressed extremely tastefully and expensively, but somewhat more magnificently than she ought to have been.
She went past the orchestra to the other side of the green, near the road, where somebody's carriage was waiting for someone.
The prince had not seen her for more than three months.
All those days since his arrival in Petersburg, he had been preparing to call on her; but perhaps a secret foreboding had held him back.
At least he could in no way anticipate what impression awaited him on meeting her, but sometimes he fearfully tried to imagine it.
One thing was clear to him—that the meeting would be painful.
Several times during those six months he had recalled the first sensation that the face of this woman had produced in him, when he had only seen it in a portrait; but even in the impression of the portrait, he recalled, there was a great deal of pain.
That month in the provinces, when he had seen her almost every day, had had a terrible effect on him, so much so that the prince drove away even the memory of that still-recent time.
For him there was something tormenting in the very face of this woman; the prince, talking with Rogozhin, had translated this feeling as one of infinite pity, and that was true: this face, ever since the portrait, had evoked in his heart all the suffering of pity; the impression of compassion and even of suffering for this being never left his heart and had not left it now.