Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/77

 in a bran-new uniform,—poor fellow,—and with terrible blue marks under his eyes, the meaning of which Iván Ilích knew.

His son always looked pitiful to him, and terrible was his frightened and compassionate glance. Besides Gerasim, it seemed to Iván Ilích, Vásya was the only one who understood and pitied him.

All sat down, and again asked about his health. There ensued a silence. Líza asked her mother about the opera-glass. Mother and daughter exchanged words about who was at fault for having mislaid it. It was an unpleasant incident.

Fédor Petrovich asked Iván Ilích whether he had seen Sarah Bernhardt. At first Iván Ilích did not understand what it was they were asking him, but later he said:

"No, and have you seen her already?"

"Yes, in Adrienne Lecouvreur."

Praskóvya Fédorovna said that she was particularly good in this or that. Her daughter objected. There ensued a conversation about the art and the realism of her play, that very conversation which is always one and the same.

In the middle of the conversation Fédor Petrovich looked at Iván Ilích, and grew silent. The others looked at him, too, and grew silent. Iván Ilích was looking with glistening eyes ahead of him, apparently vexed at them. It was necessary to mend all this, but it was impossible to do so. It was necessary to interrupt the silence. Nobody could make up his mind to do so, and all felt terribly at the thought that now the decent lie would somehow be broken, and every one would see clearly how it all was. Líza was the first to make up her mind. She interrupted the silence. She wanted to conceal what all were experiencing, but she gave herself away:

"If we are to go at all, it is time we started," she said, looking at her watch, a present from her father, and she