Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/834

 must send word to them. Yes, this is a monument which he will leave here," said she to Dolly, with the same shrewd knowing smile on her face as when she first spoke of the hospital.

"Oh, capital work!" said Sviazhsky; and then, not to seem assenting from mere politeness, he added:—

"I am surprised, count, that you, who are doing so much for the peasants' sanitary advantage, are so indifferent to schools."

"C'est devenu tellentent commun, les écoles" replied Vronsky. "You must know I do this to amuse myself. This is the way to the hospital," said he, addressing Darya Aleksandrovna, pointing to a side-path which led from the avenue. The ladies put up their sunshades and walked along the side-path.

After making a few turns and passing through a wicket-gate, Darya Aleksandrovna saw before her on rising ground a large red building of complicated architecture not completely finished. The iron roof, not as yet painted, ghttered in the sun. Near the hospital itself there was another building going up, in the midst of the woods, and workmen in aprons stood on scaffoldings laying the bricks, taking mortar from buckets and smoothing it with trowels.

"How rapidly the work is going on," remarked Sviazhsky. "The last time I was here the roof was not in position."

"It will be ready by autumn, for the inside is already nearly finished," said Anna.

"And what is this other new building?"

"A house for the doctor, and a pharmacy," replied Vronsky; and, seeing the architect, in a short overcoat, approaching, he excused himself to the ladies, and went to meet him.

Going round the mortar-pit, from which the workmen were getting lime, he joined the architect and began to talk angrily with him.

"The pediment will be much too low," he replied to Anna, who asked him what the discussion was about.