ou don't wish to see me, you will see a remarkable actress,"
Mariette said, answering the meaning of his words. "Wasn't she great
in the last scene?" she turned to her husband.

The general bowed his head.

"That does not affect me," said Nekhludoff. "I have seen so much real
misfortune to-day that----"

"Sit down and tell us what you have seen."

The husband listened, and ironically smiled with his eyes.

"I went to see that woman who has been released. She is entirely
broken down."

"That is the woman of whom I have spoken to you," Mariette said to her
husband.

"Yes; I was very glad that she could be released," he calmly said,
nodding his head and smiling ironically, as it seemed to Nekhludoff,
under his mustache. "I will go to the smoking-room."

Nekhludoff waited, expecting that Mariette would tell him that
something which she said she had to tell him, but instead she only
jested and talked of the performance, which, she thought, ought to
affect him particularly.

Nekhludoff understood that the only purpose for which she had brought
him to the theatre was to display her evening toilet with her
shoulders and mole, and he was both pleased and disgusted. Now he saw
what was under the veil of the charm that at first attracted him.
Looking on Mariette, he admired her, but he knew that she was a
prevaricator who was living with her career-making husband; that what
she had said the other day was untrue, and that she only wished--and
neither knew why--to make him love her. And, as has been said, he was
both pleased and disgusted. Several times he attempted to leave, took
his hat but still remained. But finally, when the general, his thick
mustache reeking with tobacco, returned to the box and glanced at
Nekhludoff patronizingly disdainful, as if he did not recognize him,
Nekhludoff walked out before the door closed behind the general, and,
finding his overcoat, left the theatre.

On his way home he suddenly noticed before him a tall, well-built,
loudly-dressed woman. Every passer-by turned to look at her.
Nekhludoff walked quicker than the woman, and also involuntarily
looked her in the face. Her face, probably rouged, was pretty; her
eyes flashed at him, and she smiled. Nekhludoff involuntarily thought
of Mariette, for he experienced the same feeling of attraction and
disgust which took hold of him in the theatre. Passing her hastily,
Nekhludoff turned the corner of the street, and, to the surprise of
the po