ent love. She recalled
not herself only, but all her women-friends and acquaintances.
She thought of them on the one day of their triumph, when they
had stood like Kitty under the wedding crown, with love and hope
and dread in their hearts, renouncing the past, and stepping
forward into the mysterious future. Among the brides that came
back to her memory, she thought too of her darling Anna, of whose
proposed divorce she had just been hearing. And she had stood
just as innocent in orange flowers and bridal veil. And now?
"It's terribly strange," she said to herself. It was not merely
the sisters, the women-friends and female relations of the bride
who were following every detail of the ceremony. Women who were
quite strangers, mere spectators, were watching it excitedly,
holding their breath, in fear of losing a single movement or
expression of the bride and bridegroom, and angrily not
answering, often not hearing, the remarks of the callous men, who
kept making joking or irrelevant observations.

"Why has she been crying? Is she being married against her
will?"

"Against her will to a fine fellow like that? A prince, isn't
he?"

"Is that her sister in the white satin? Just listen how the
deacon booms out, 'And fearing her husband.'"

"Are the choristers from Tchudovo?"

"No, from the Synod."

"I asked the footman. He says he's going to take her home to
his country place at once. Awfully rich, they say. That's why
she's being married to him."

"No, they're a well-matched pair."

"I say, Marya Vassilievna, you were making out those fly-away
crinolines were not being worn. Just look at her in the puce
dress--an ambassador's wife they say she is--how her skirt
bounces out from side to side!"

"What a pretty dear the bride is--like a lamb decked with
flowers! Well, say what you will, we women feel for our sister."

Such were the comments in the crowd of gazing women who had
succeeded in slipping in at the church doors.

Chapter 6

When the ceremony of plighting troth was over, the beadle spread
before the lectern in the middle of the church a piece of pink
silken stuff, the choir sang a complicated and elaborate psalm,
in which the bass and tenor sang responses to one another, and
the priest turning round pointed the bridal pair to the pink silk
rug. Though both had often heard a great deal about the saying
that the one who steps first on the rug will be the head of the
house, neithe