Above the chair, in an oval gilt frame, hung a portrait of Anna, the excellent work of a distinguished painter. Alekseï Aleksandrovitch looked at it. The eyes, as inscrutable as they had been on the evening of their attempted explanation, looked down at him ironically and insolently. Everything about this remarkable portrait seemed to Alekseï Aleksandrovitch insupportably insolent and provoking, from the black lace on her head and her dark hair, to the white, beautiful hand and the ring-finger covered with jeweled rings.
After gazing at this portrait for a moment, Alekseï Aleksandrovitch shuddered, his lips trembled, and with a "brr" he turned away. Hastily sitting down in his arm-chair, he opened his book. He tried to read, but he could not regain the keen interest which he had felt before in the cuneiform inscriptions. His eyes looked at the book, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He was thinking, not of his wife, but of a complication which had recently arisen in important matters connected with his official activity, and which at present formed the chief interest of his service. He felt that he was more deeply than ever plunged into this complicated affair, and that he could without self-conceit claim that the idea which had originated in his brain was bound to disentangle the whole difficulty, to confirm him in his official career, put down his enemies, and thus enable him to do a signal service to the State. As soon as his servant had brought his tea, and left the room, Alekseï Aleksandrovitch got up and went to his writing-table. Pushing to the center of it a portfolio which contained papers relating to this affair, he seized a pencil from the stand, and, with a faintly sarcastic smile of self-satisfaction, buried himself in the perusal of the documents relative to the complicated business under consideration.
The complication was as follows: The distinguishing trait of Alekseï Aleksandrovitch as a government official,—the one characteristic trait peculiar to him alone, though it must mark every progressive chinovnik,—the trait which had contributed to his success
