Of course she, Marie Ivanovna, had
wrought this change in him. There was no doubt this morning that she
loved him. She had in her face and bearing all the pride and also all
the humility that a love, won, secured, ensured, brings with it. She
did not look at him often nor take his hand. She spoke to me during
the drive and only once and again smiled up at him; but her soul,
shining through the thin covering of her body, laughed to me, crying:
"I am happy because I have my desire. Of yesterday I remember nothing,
of to-morrow I can know nothing, but to-day is mine!"
He was very quiet. When he looked at her his eyes took complete
possession of her. I did not, that morning, count at all to either of
them, but I too felt a kind of pride as though I were sharing in some
triumphal procession. She chattered on, and then at last was silent. I
remember that the great heat of the morning wrought in us all a kind
of lethargy. We were lazily confident that day that nothing evil could
overtake us.
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