Pagina 630 de 2288

Again and again she went over in her memory all her relations

with the family. She remembered the simple delight expressed on

the round, good-humored face of Anna Pavlovna at their meetings;

she remembered their secret confabulations about the invalid,

their plots to draw him away from the work which was forbidden

him, and to get him out-of-doors; the devotion of the youngest

boy, who used to call her "my Kitty," and would not go to bed

without her. How nice it all was! Then she recalled the thin,

terribly thin figure of Petrov, with his long neck, in his brown

coat, his scant, curly hair, his questioning blue eyes that were

so terrible to Kitty at first, and his painful attempts to seem

hearty and lively in her presence. She recalled the efforts she

had made at first to overcome the repugnance she felt for him, as

for all consumptive people, and the pains it had cost her to

think of things to say to him.