face, she became mute and was not to be shaken in her determination.
“You will change it, won’t you?” said Liza. And as Princess Márya gave no answer, she left the room.
Princess Márya was left alone. She did not comply with Liza’s request, she not only left her hair as it was, but did not even look in her glass. Letting her arms fall helplessly, she sat with downcast eyes and pondered.
A husband, a man, a strong dominant and strangely attractive being rose in her imagination, and carried her into a totally different happy world of his own.
She fancied a child, her own —such as she had seen the day before in the arms of her nurse’s daughter—at her own breast, the husband standing by and gazing tenderly at her and the child.
“But no, it is impossible, I am too ugly,” she thought.
“Please come to tea. The prince will be out in a moment,” came the maid’s voice at the door.
She roused herself, and felt appalled at what she had been thinking, and before going down she went into the room where the icons hung and, her eyes fixed on the dark face of a large icon of the Saviour lit by a lamp, she stood before it with folded hands for a few moments.
A painful doubt filled her soul. Could the joy of love, of earthly love for a man, be for her? In her thoughts of marriage Princess Márya dreamed of happiness and of children, but her strongest, most deeply hidden longing was for earthly love. The more she tried to hide this feeling from others and even from herself, the stronger it grew.
“O God,” she said,