Nikoláevich, were not living, it would have been at once announced in the Gazette , as he is a colonel.”
The princess looked at him, not grasping what he was saying, but cheered by the expression of regretful sympathy on his face.
“And I have known so many cases of a splinter wound” (the Gazette said it was a shell) “either proving fatal at once or being very slight,” continued Nikoláy. “We must hope for the best, and I am sure …”
Princess Márya interrupted him.
“Oh, that would be so dread …” she began and, prevented by agitation from finishing, she bent her head with a movement as graceful as everything she did in his presence and, looking up at him gratefully, went out, following her aunt.
That evening Nikoláy did not go out, but stayed at home to settle some accounts with the horse dealers. When he had finished that business it was already too late to go anywhere but still too early to go to bed, and for a long time he paced up and down the room, reflecting on his life, a thing he rarely did.
Princess Márya had made an agreeable impression on him when he had met her in Smolénsk province. His having encountered her in such exceptional circumstances, and his mother having at one time mentioned her to him as a good match, had drawn his particular attention to her. When he met her again in Vorónezh the impression she made on him was not merely pleasing but powerful. Nikoláy had been struck by the peculiar moral beauty he observed in her at this time. He was, however, preparing to go away and it had not entered his head