y's soul.
"No, it was not only that gay, kind, and frank look, not only that
handsome exterior, that I loved in him. I divined his noble, resolute,
self-sacrificing spirit too," she said to herself. "Yes, he is poor now
and I am rich.... Yes, that's the only reason.... Yes, were it not for
that..." And remembering his former tenderness, and looking now at his
kind, sorrowful face, she suddenly understood the cause of his coldness.

"But why, Count, why?" she almost cried, unconsciously moving closer to
him. "Why? Tell me. You must tell me!"

He was silent.

"I don't understand your why, Count," she continued, "but it's hard for
me... I confess it. For some reason you wish to deprive me of our former
friendship. And that hurts me." There were tears in her eyes and in her
voice. "I have had so little happiness in life that every loss is hard
for me to bear.... Excuse me, good-by!" and suddenly she began to cry
and was hurrying from the room.

"Princess, for God's sake!" he exclaimed, trying to stop her.
"Princess!"

She turned round. For a few seconds they gazed silently into one
another's eyes--and what had seemed impossible and remote suddenly
became possible, inevitable, and very near.

CHAPTER VII

In the winter of 1813 Nicholas married Princess Mary and moved to Bald
Hills with his wife, his mother, and Sonya.

Within four years he had paid off all his remaining debts without
selling any of his wife's property, and having received a small
inheritance on the death of a cousin he paid his debt to Pierre as well.

In another three years, by 1820, he had so managed his affairs that he
was able to buy a small estate adjoining Bald Hills and was negotiating
to buy back Otradnoe--that being his pet dream.

Having started farming from necessity, he soon grew so devoted to it
that it became his favorite and almost his sole occupation. Nicholas was
a plain farmer: he did not like innovations, especially the English ones
then coming into vogue. He laughed at theoretical treatises on estate
management, disliked factories, the raising of expensive products,
and the buying of expensive seed corn, and did not make a hobby of any
particular part of the work on his estate. He always had before his
mind's eye the estate as a whole and not any particular part of it. The
chief thing in his eyes was not the nitrogen in the soil, nor the oxygen
in the air, nor manures, nor special plows, but that most important
agen