“You haven’t a bit of heart, Pasha.”
He would not be drawn into conversation, treating everything she said with an inscrutable, somewhat patronising flippancy that nettled her. At last he said he was going out.
“‘Looking up old chums’ again?” she asked. “And does it mean that you are going to dine out once more?”
“I’ll try not to, mother,” he answered, with a fond smile in his bright, aggressive eyes.
His small slender figure, beautifully erect, and his upward-tending, frank features haunted her long after he left. She felt like a jealous bride. Otherwise he kept her thoughts tinged with sunshine. A great attachment on quite new terms had sprung up between mother and son since his arrival. At the same time he seemed to belong to a world which she was at a loss to make out. Nor did he appear disinclined to talk of his life in St. Petersburg—a subject upon which she was continually plying him with questions. The trouble was that the questions that beset her mind could no more be formulated than a blind man can formulate his curiosity as to colour. Moreover, all these questions seemed to come crowding upon her when Pavel was away and to vanish the moment she set eyes on him. She told herself that he belonged to a different generation from hers, that it was the everlasting case of “fathers and sons.” But this only quickened her jealousy of the “sons” and her despair at being classed with the discarded generation. And the keener her jealousy, the deeper was her interest in Pasha.
CHAPTER XII.
A BEWILDERING ENCOUNTER.
WHEN Pavel was in St. Petersburg Anna Nicolayevna had missed him only occasionally. Now that he was with her his absences were a continuous torture to her. On the present occasion she sought diversion in a visit to Princess Chertogoff where she expected to hear something about the mysterious prisoner. Princess Chertogoff was a lame, impoverished noblewoman whose daughter was married to the assistant-procureur. In higher circles she was looked down upon as a social outcast, so that Anna Nicolayevna’s visits to her had a surreptitious character and something of the charm of forbidden fruit. Pavel’s mother was fond of the stir her appearance produced in houses of this kind. The curious part of it was that the impecunious princess was one of the very few persons in the world whose presence irritated her. It seemed as though this irritation had a peculiar attraction for her.