looking-glass when she was summoned to morning tea. She went down; her
mother noticed her pallor, but only said: 'How interesting you are
to-day,' and taking her in in a glance, she added: 'How well that
dress suits you; you should always put it on when you want to make an
impression on any one.' Elena made no reply, and sat down in a corner.
Meanwhile it struck nine o'clock; there were only two haurs now till
eleven. Elena tried to read, then to sew, then to read again, then she
vowed to herself to walk a hundred times up and down one alley, and
paced it a hundred times; then for a long time she watched Anna
Vassilyevna laying out the cards for patience . . . and looked at the
clock; it was not yet ten. Shubin came into the drawing-room. She
tried to talk to him, and begged his pardon, what for she did not know
herself. . . . Every word she uttered did not cost her effort exactly,
but roused a kind of amazement in herself. Shubin bent over her. She
expected ridicule, raised her eyes, and saw before her a sorrowful and
sympathetic face. . . . She smiled at this face. Shubin, too, smiled
at her without speaking, and gently left her. She tried to keep him,
but could not at once remember what to call him. At last it struck
eleven. Then she began to wait, to wait, and to listen. She could do
nothing now; she ceased even to think. Her heart was stirred into
life again, and began beating louder and louder, and strange, to say,
the time seemed flying by. A quarter of an hour passed, then half an
hour; a few minutes more, as Elena thought, had passed, when suddenly
she started; the clock had struck not twelve, but one. 'He is not
coming; he is going away without saying good-bye.' . . . The blood
rushed to her head with this thought. She felt that she was gasping
for breath, that she was on the point of sobbing. . . . She ran to her
own room, and fell with her face in her clasped hands on to the bed.

For half an hour she lay motionless; the tears flowed through her