How could there be any possibility of extremes in following teachings which bid you offer your left cheek when the right has been struck, and to give your shirt when your cloak is taken from you? But the princess was displeased with this tendency to exaggeration, and she was still more displeased to feel that Kitty was unwilling to open her heart to her. In point of fact, Kitty kept secret from her mother her new views and feelings. She kept them secret, not because she lacked affection or respect for her mother, but simply because she was her mother. It would have been easier to confess them to a stranger than to her mother.
"It is a long time since Anna Pavlovna has been to see us," said the princess one day, speaking of Madame Petrof. "I invited her to come, but she seems offended."
"No, I don't think so, maman," reiplied Kitty, with a guilty look.
"You have not been with her lately, have you?"
"We planned a walk on the mountain for to-morrow," said Kitty.
"I see no objection," replied the princess, noticing her daughter's confusion, and trying to fathom the reason.
That same day Varenka came to dinner and announced that Anna Pavlovna had given up the proposed expedition. The princess noticed that Kitty again blushed.
"Kitty, has there been anything unpleasant between you and the Petrofs?" she asked, as soon as they were alone. "Why have they ceased to send their children, or to come themselves?"
Kitty replied that nothing had happened, and that she really did not understand why Anna Pavlovna seemed to be angry with her; and she told the truth. She did not know the reasons for the change in Madame Petrof, but she suspected them, and thus also she suspected a thing which she dared not to confess, even to herself, still less to her mother. This was one of those things which you know, but which are impossible to speak even
