Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, having signed the papers which he brought, sat in silence for some time looking at Sliudin, and kept trying, but found it impossible, to open his heart to him. The question, "Have you heard of my misfortune?" was on his lips; but it ended in his saying as usual, when he dismissed him:—
"You will have the goodness to prepare me this work."
The doctor was another man who was well disposed to him, but between them there had long been a tacit understanding that they were both full of business and in a hurry.
Alekseï Aleksandrovitch did not think at all about his women friends, or even of the chiefest among them, the Countess Lidia Ivanovna. Women simply as women were strange and repulsive to him.
CHAPTER XXII
Alekseï Aleksandrovitch forgot the Countess Lidia Ivanovna, but she did not forget him. She reached his house at his darkest moment of solitary despair, and made her way to his library without waiting to be announced. She found him still sitting in the same position with his head between his hands.
"J'ai forcé la consigne," she said, as she came in with rapid steps, breathless with emotion and agitation. "I know all, Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, my friend!" and she pressed his hand between both of hers and looked at him with her beautiful melancholy eyes.
Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, with a frown, arose, and, having withdrawn his hand, offered her a chair.
"I beg you to sit down. I am not receiving because I am suffering, countess," he said, and his lips quivered.
"My friend!" repeated the countess, without taking her eyes from him; and suddenly she lifted her eyebrows so that they formed a triangle on her forehead, and this grimace made her ugly yellow face still uglier than
