Mademoiselle Julie Karágina. He is very attentive to her.”
“He visits them?”
“Yes, very often. And do you know the new way of courting?” said Pierre with an amused smile, evidently in that cheerful mood of good humored raillery for which he so often reproached himself in his diary.
“No,” replied Princess Márya.
“To please Moscow girls nowadays one has to be melancholy. He is very melancholy with Mademoiselle Karágina,” said Pierre.
“Really?” asked Princess Márya, looking into Pierre’s kindly face and still thinking of her own sorrow.
“It would be a relief,” thought she, “if I ventured to confide what I am feeling to someone. I should like to tell everything to Pierre. He is kind and generous. It would be a relief. He would give me advice.”
“Would you marry him?”
“Oh, my God, Count, there are