she seemed to want was not to refuse, but to please maman. What is there about her? What is it that gives her this power of indifference, this calmness and independence? How I should like to learn this of her!" thought Kitty, as she looked into her peaceful face.
The princess asked Varenka to sing again; and she sang this time as well as the first, with the same care and the same perfection, standing erect near the piano, and beating time with her thin brown hand.
The next piece in her music-roll was an Italian aria. Kitty played the introduction, and looked at Varenka.
"Let us not do that one," said she, blushing.
Kitty, in alarm and wonder, fixed her eyes on Varenka's face.
"Well! another one," she said, hastily turning the pages, and somehow feeling an intuition that the Italian song brought back to her friend some painful association.
"No," replied Varenka, putting her hand on the notes and smiling, "let us sing this." And she sang it as calmly and coolly as the one before.
After the singing was over, they all thanked her again, and went out into the dining-room to drink tea. Kitty and Varenka went down into the little garden next the house.
"You had some association with that song, did you not?" asked Kitty. "You need not tell me about it," she hastened to add; "simply say, 'Yes, I have.'"
"Why should I not tell you about it? Yes, there is an association," said Varenka, calmly, and not waiting for Kitty to say anything, "and it is a painful one, I once loved a man, and used to sing that piece to him."
Kitty with wide-open eyes looked at Varenka meekly, but did not speak.
"I loved him, and he loved me also; but his mother was unwilling, and he married some one else. He does not live very far from us now, and I sometimes see him. You did n't think that I also had my romance, did you?"
And her face lighted up with a rare beauty, and a fire such as Kitty imagined might have been habitual in other days.
