oad-chested, muscular Phillip bowed slightly, as if excusing
himself, and submissively and silently stepped over to the next
window, and, carefully looking at the Princess, so arranged the
curtain that no stray ray should fall on her. It was again
unsatisfactory, and again the exhausted Princess was obliged to
interrupt her conversation about mysticism and correct the
unintelligent Phillip, who was pitilessly tormenting her. For a moment
Phillip's eyes flashed fire.

"'The devil knows what you want,' he is probably saying to himself,"
Nekhludoff thought, as he watched this play. But the handsome, strong
Phillip concealed his impatience, and calmly carried out the
instructions of the enervated, weak, artificial Princess Sophia
Vasilievna.

"Of course there is considerable truth in Darwin's theory," said the
returning Kolosoff, stretching himself on a low arm-chair and looking
through sleepy eyes at the Princess, "but he goes too far."

"And do you believe in heredity?" she asked Nekhludoff, oppressed by
his silence.

"In heredity?" repeated Nekhludoff. "No, I do not," he said, being
entirely absorbed at the moment by those strange forms which, for some
reason, appeared to his imagination. Alongside of the strong, handsome
Phillip, whom he looked upon as a model, he imagined Kolosoff, naked,
his abdomen like a water-melon, bald-headed, and his arms hanging
like two cords. He also dimly imagined what the silk-covered shoulders
of Sophia Vasilievna would appear like in reality, but the picture was
too terrible, and he drove it from his mind.

Sophia Vasilievna scanned him from head to foot.

"Missy is waiting for you," she said. "Go to her room; she wished to
play for you a new composition by Schuman. It is very interesting."

"It isn't true. Why should she lie so!" Nekhludoff thought, rising and
pressing her transparent, bony, ring-bedecked hand.

In the drawing-room he met Katherine Alexeievna, returning to her
mother's apartments. As usual, she greeted him in French.

"I see that the duties of juryman act depressingly upon you," she
said.

"Yes, pardon me. I am in low spirits to-day, and I have no right to
bore people," answered Nekhludoff.

"Why are you in low spirits?"

"Permit me not to speak of it," he said, looking for his hat as they
entered the Princess' cabinet.

"And do you remember telling us that one ought to tell the truth? And
what cruel truths you used to tell us! Why don't you tell us now?