“Yes. It is a pity you were not there. There were heaps of guests—about a thousand people, and all of them princes or generals, and there was music, and I danced—But, Katenka” I broke off, “you are not listening to me?”
“Oh yes, I am listening. You said that you danced—?”
“Why are you so serious?”
“Well, one cannot always be gay.”
“But you have changed tremendously since Woloda and I first went to Moscow. Tell me the truth, now: why are you so odd?” My tone was resolute.
“Am I so odd?” said Katenka with an animation which showed me that my question had interested her. “I don’t see that I am so at all.”
“Well, you are not the same as you were before,” I continued. “Once upon a time any one could see that you were our equal in everything, and that you loved us like relations, just as we did you; but now you are always serious, and keep yourself apart from us.”
“Oh, not at all.”
“But let me finish, please,” I interrupted, already conscious of a slight tickling in my nose—the precursor of the tears which usually came to my eyes whenever I had to vent any long pent-up feeling. “You avoid us, and talk to no one but Mimi, as though you had no wish for our further acquaintance.”
“But one cannot always remain the same—one must change a little sometimes,” replied Katenka, who had an inveterate habit of pleading some such fatalistic necessity whenever she did not know what else to say.