nger her secret, and she was ashamed that any one
should guess the current of her thoughts. It was hard for her to
understand how she could have thus taken the Cossack into her confidence,
and she would have made almost any sacrifice to take back the confession.
Good he was, and honest, and kind-hearted, but she was ashamed of what she
had done. It seemed to her that, besides giving up to another the
knowledge of her heart, she had also done something against the dignity of
him she loved. She herself felt no superiority over Johann Schmidt; they
were equals in every way. But she did feel, and strongly, that the Cossack
was not the equal of the Count, and she reproached herself with having
made a confidant of one beneath her idol in station and refinement. This
feeling sprang from such a multiplicity of sources, as almost to defy
explanation. There was, at the bottom of it, the strange, unreasoning
notion of the superiority of one class over another by right of blood,
from which no race seems to be wholly exempt, and which has produced such
surprising results in the world. Poor Vjera had been brought up in one of
those countries where that tradition is still strongest. The mere sound of
the word "Count" evoked a body of impressions so firmly rooted, so deeply
ingrained, as necessarily to influence her judgment. The outward manner of
the man did the rest, his dignity under all circumstances, his
uncomplaining patience, his unquestioning generosity, his quiet courtesy
to every one. There was something in every word he spoke, in his every
action, which distinguished him from his companions. They themselves felt
it. He was sometimes ridiculous, poor man, and they laughed together over
his carefully chosen language, over the grand sweep of his bow and his
punctilious attention to the smallest promise or shadow of a promise.
These things amused them, but at the same time they felt that he could
never be what they were, and that those manners and speeches of his,
which, if they had imitated them, would have seemed in themselves so many
forms of vulgarity, were somehow not vulgar in him. Vjera, as she loved
him, felt all this far more keenly than the others. And besides, to add to
her embarrassment at present, there was the girl's maidenly shyness and
timidity. Since she had told Johann Schmidt her secret, she felt as though
all eyes were upon her, and as though every one were about to turn upon
her with those jesting questions whi