“You yourself know, mamma, that Borya was hanged a full year ago!”
She looks at her mother with the motionless, pathetic gaze of her very dark eyes, and repeats:
“You yourself know this, mamma!”
Sofia Alexandrovna’s eyes are widely dilated; dull, there is terror in them, and the deep pupils burn with an impercipient lustre in their dark depths. She repeats almost soundlessly, looking straight into Natasha’s eyes:
“Hanged!”
She resumes her place, looks out of her sad eyes at the white Aphrodite and the red roses at the goddess’s feet, and is silent. Her face is white and rigid, her lips are red and tightly set; there is a suggestion of latent madness in the still lustre of her eyes.
Before the image of eternal beauty, before the fragrance of the short-lived, exultant roses, she is hardening as it were into an image of the eternal grief of a disconsolate mother.
XXXI
Elena Kirillovna quietly descends the narrow side staircase into the garden. She sits down on a bench somewhat away from the house, looks upon the green bedecked pond and weeps.
Natasha goes into her room in the mezzanine. She opens a book and tries to read. But she finds it impossible. She puts the book aside and looks out of the window, and her eyes are dimmed.