| The rustle of a woman's dress was heard in the next room. Prince
Andrew shook himself as if waking up, and his face assumed the look
it had had in Anna Pavlovna's drawing room. Pierre removed his feet
from the sofa. The princess came in. She had changed her gown for
a house dress as fresh and elegant as the other. Prince Andrew rose
and politely placed a chair for her.
"How is it," she began, as usual in French, settling
down briskly and fussily in the easy chair, "how is it Annette
never got married? How stupid you men all are not to have married
her! Excuse me for saying so, but you have no sense about women.
What an argumentative fellow you are, Monsieur Pierre!"
"And I am still arguing with your husband. I can't understand
why he wants to go to the war," replied Pierre, addressing
the princess with none of the embarrassment so commonly shown
by young men in their intercourse with young women.
The princess started. Evidently Pierre's words touched her
to the quick.
"Ah, that is just what I tell him!" said she. "I
don't understand it; I don't in the least understand why men can't
live without wars. How is it that we women don't want anything
of the kind, don't need it? Now you shall judge between us. I
always tell him: Here he is Uncle's aide-de-camp, a most brilliant
position. He is so well known, so much appreciated by everyone.
The other day at the Apraksins' I heard a lady asking, 'Is that
the famous Prince Andrew?' I did indeed." She laughed. "He
is so well received everywhere. He might easily become aide-de-camp
to the Emperor. You know the Emperor spoke to him most graciously.
Annette and I were speaking of how to arrange it. What do you
think?"
Pierre looked at his friend and, noticing that he did not
like the conversation, gave no reply.
"When are you starting?" he asked.
"Oh, don't speak of his going, don't! I won't hear it
spoken of," said the princess in the same petulantly playful
tone in which she had spoken to Hippolyte in the drawing room
and which was so plainly ill-suited to the family circle of which
Pierre was almost a member. "Today when I remembered that
all these delightful associations must be broken off... and then
you know, Andre..." (she looked significantly at her husband)
"I'm afraid, I'm afraid!" she whispered, and a shudder
ran down her back.
Her husband looked at her as if surprised to notice that someone
besides Pierre and himself was in the room, and addressed her
in a tone of frigid politeness.
"What is it you are afraid of, Lise? I don't understand,"
said he.
"There, what egotists men all are: all, all egotists!
Just for a whim of his own, goodness only knows why, he leaves
me and locks me up alone in the country."
"With my father and sister, remember," said Prince
Andrew gently.
"Alone all the same, without my friends.... And he expects
me not to be afraid."
Her tone was now querulous and her lip drawn up, giving her
not a joyful, but an animal, squirrel-like expression. She paused
as if she felt it indecorous to speak of her pregnancy before
Pierre, though the gist of the matter lay in that.
"I still can't understand what you are afraid of,"
said Prince Andrew slowly, not taking his eyes off his wife.
The princess blushed, and raised her arms with a gesture of
despair.
"No, Andrew, I must say you have changed. Oh, how you
have..."
"Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier," said
Prince Andrew. "You had better go."
The princess said nothing, but suddenly her short downy lip
quivered. Prince Andrew rose, shrugged his shoulders, and walked
about the room.
Pierre looked over his spectacles with naive surprise, now
at him and now at her, moved as if about to rise too, but changed
his mind.
"Why should I mind Monsieur Pierre being here?"
exclaimed the little princess suddenly, her pretty face all at
once distorted by a tearful grimace. "I have long wanted
to ask you, Andrew, why you have changed so to me? What have I
done to you? You are going to the war and have no pity for me.
Why is it?"
"Lise!" was all Prince Andrew said. But that one
word expressed an entreaty, a threat, and above all conviction
that she would herself regret her words. But she went on hurriedly:
"You treat me like an invalid or a child. I see it all!
Did you behave like that six months ago?"
"Lise, I beg you to desist," said Prince Andrew still
more emphatically.
Pierre, who had been growing more and more agitated as he
listened to all this, rose and approached the princess. He seemed
unable to bear the sight of tears and was ready to cry himself.
"Calm yourself, Princess! It seems so to you because...
I assure you I myself have experienced... and so... because...
No, excuse me! An outsider is out of place here... No, don't distress
yourself... Good-by!"
Prince Andrew caught him by the hand.
"No, wait, Pierre! The princess is too kind to wish to
deprive me of the pleasure of spending the evening with you."
"No, he thinks only of himself," muttered the princess
without restraining her angry tears.
"Lise!" said Prince Andrew dryly, raising his voice
to the pitch which indicates that patience is exhausted.
Suddenly the angry, squirrel-like expression of the princess'
pretty face changed into a winning and piteous look of fear. Her
beautiful eyes glanced askance at her husband's face, and her
own assumed the timid, deprecating expression of a dog when it
rapidly but feebly wags its drooping tail.
"Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" she muttered, and lifting
her dress with one hand she went up to her husband and kissed
him on the forehead.
"Good night, Lise," said he, rising and courteously
kissing her hand as he would have done to a stranger.
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