old, tacked onto her, and devouring her with their eyes. But there was something in her higher than what surrounded her. There was in her the glow of the real diamond among glass imitations. This glow shone out in her exquisite, truly enigmatic eyes. The weary, and at the same time passionate, glance of those eyes, encircled by dark rings, impressed one by its perfect sincerity. Everyone looking into those eyes fancied he knew her wholly, and knowing her, could not but love her. At the sight of Anna, her whole face lighted up at once with a smile of delight.
“Ah, how glad I am to see you!” she said, going up to her. “Yesterday at the races all I wanted was to get to you, but you’d gone away. I did so want to see you, yesterday especially. Wasn’t it awful?” she said, looking at Anna with eyes that seemed to lay bare all her soul.
“Yes; I had no idea it would be so thrilling,” said Anna, blushing.
The company got up at this moment to go into the garden.
“I’m not going,” said Liza, smiling and settling herself close to Anna. “You won’t go either, will you? Who wants to play croquet?”
“Oh, I like it,” said Anna.
“There, how do you manage never to be bored by things? It’s delightful to look at you. You’re alive, but I’m bored.”
“How can you be bored? Why, you live in the liveliest set in Petersburg,” said Anna.
“Possibly the people who are not of our set are even more bored; but we—I certainly—are not happy, but awfully, awfully bored.”
Sappho smoking a cigarette went off into the garden with the two young men. Betsy and Stremov remained at the tea-table.