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‘You go for a walk, and you come to a shop, and they beg you to buy something: “Erlaucht, Excellenz, Durchlaucht.”r Well, by the time they get to “Durchlaucht” I can’t hold out: there go ten thalers.’

‘It’s only out of boredom,’ said the princess.

‘Certainly it’s out of boredom. Such boredom, my dear, that you don’t know what to do with yourself.’

‘How can you be bored, Prince? There’s so much that’s interesting in Germany now,’ said Marya Evgenyevna.

‘But I know all the interesting things: I know prune soup, I know pea sausages. I know it all.’

‘No, like it or not, Prince, their institutions are interesting,’ said the colonel.

‘What’s so interesting? They’re all pleased as Punch: they’ve beaten everybody.35 Well, but what’s there for me to be pleased about? I didn’t beat anybody, I just have to take my boots off myself and put them outside the door myself. In the morning I get up, dress myself at once, go downstairs and drink vile tea. Home is quite another thing! You wake up without hurrying, get angry at something, grumble a little, come properly to your senses, think things over, don’t have to hurry.’

‘But time is money, you’re forgetting that,’ said the colonel.

‘Which time! There are times when you’d give a whole month away for fifty kopecks, and others when you wouldn’t give up half an hour for any price. Right, Katenka? Why are you so dull?’

‘I’m all right.’

‘Where are you going? Stay longer,’ he said to Varenka.

‘I must go home,’ said Varenka, getting up and again dissolving in laughter.

Having recovered, she said good-bye and went into the house to get her hat. Kitty followed her. Even Varenka looked different to her now. She was not worse, but she was different from what she had formerly imagined her to be.

‘Ah, I haven’t laughed like that for a long time!’ said Varenka, collecting her parasol and bag. ‘He’s so nice, your father!’

Kitty was silent.

‘When shall we see each other?’ asked Varenka.

‘Maman wanted to call on the Petrovs. You won’t be there?’ Kitty said, testing Varenka.

‘I will,’ replied Varenka. ‘They’re leaving, so I promised to come and help them pack.’

‘Well, I’ll come, too.’

‘No, why should you?’

‘Why not? why not? why not?’ Kitty said, opening her eyes wide and taking hold of Varenka’s parasol to keep her from leaving. ‘No, wait, why not?’

‘It’s just that your father has come, and, then, they’re embarrassed with you.’

‘No, tell me, why don’t you want me to visit the Petrovs often? You don’t want it, do you? Why?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Varenka said calmly.

‘No, please tell me!’

‘Tell you everything?’ asked Varenka.

‘Everything, everything!’ Kitty repeated.

‘There’s nothing special, only that Mikhail Alexeevich’ - that was the painter’s name - ‘wanted to leave sooner, and now he doesn’t want to leave at all, Varenka said, smiling.’

‘Well? Well?’ Kitty urged, giving Varenka a dark look.

‘Well, and for some reason Anna Pavlovna said he didn’t want to leave because you are here. Of course, it was inappropriate, but because of it, because of you, there was a quarrel. And you know how irritable these sick people are.’

Kitty, frowning still more, kept silent, and Varenka alone talked, trying to soothe and calm her and seeing the explosion coming-whether of tears or of words, she did not know.

‘So it’s better if you don’t go ... And you understand, you won’t be offended...’

‘It serves me right, it serves me right!’ Kitty began quickly, snatching the parasol out of Varenka’s hands and looking past her friend’s eyes.

Varenka wanted to smile, seeing her friend’s childish anger, but she was afraid of insulting her.

‘How does it serve you right? I don’t understand,’ she said.

‘It serves me right because it was all pretence, because it was all contrived and not from the heart. What did I have to do with some stranger? And it turned out that I caused a quarrel and that I did what nobody asked me to do. Because it was all pretence! pretence! pretence! ...’

‘But what was the purpose of pretending?’ Varenka said