Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/639

 CHAPTER XII

and Vronsky, wearying of their friend's learned loquacity, exchanged glances. Finally Vronsky, without saying anything to his host, went over to a small painting.

"Oh! How charming! What a gem—wonderful! How fascinating!" said both of them at once.

"What pleases them so?" thought Mikhaïlof. He had completely forgotten this picture, painted three years before. He had forgotten all the anguish and joy which that painting had caused him while he had been working at it day and night for days at a time—he had forgotten about it as he always forgot about his pictures when once they were finished. He did not even like to look at it, and he had brought it out only because he was expecting an Englishman who had thought of purchasing it.

"That is nothing," he said—"only an old study."

"But it is capital," replied Golenishchef, very honestly, falling under the charm of the painting.

Two children were fishing under the shade of a laburnum. The elder, all absorbed in his work, was cautiously disentangling his float from a bush. The younger one was lying in the grass, leaning his blond, frowzy head on his hand, and gazing at the water with great, pensive blue eyes. What was he thinking about?

The enthusiasm caused by this study brought back somewhat of Mikhaïlof's first emotion; but he did not love the vain memories of the past, and, therefore, pleasant as such praise was to him, he preferred to take his guests to a third painting.

But Vronsky asked him if the painting was for sale; but to Mikhaïlof, who was excited by the presence of visitors, the question of money was very distasteful.

"It was put up for sale," said he, darkly frowning.

After his visitors had gone, Mikhaïlof sat down before his painting of Christ and Pilate, and mentally reviewed all that had been said, and if not said had