“Always the same thing,” she said, with a smile.

She spoke the truth. If ever at any moment she had been asked what she was thinking of, she could have answered truly: of the same thing, of her happiness and her unhappiness. She was thinking, just when he came upon her, of this: why was it, she wondered, that to others, to Betsy (she knew of her secret connection with Tushkevitch) it was all easy, while to her it was such torture? Today this thought gained special poignancy from certain other considerations. She asked him about the races. He answered her questions, and, seeing that she was agitated, trying to calm her, he began telling her in the simplest tone the details of his preparations for the races.

“Tell him or not tell him?” she thought, looking into his quiet, affectionate eyes. “He is so happy, so absorbed in his races that he won’t understand as he ought, he won’t understand all the gravity of this fact to us.”

“But you haven’t told me what you were thinking of when I came in,” he said, interrupting his narrative; “please tell me!”