Could that touching pleasure he showed when she came near be the cause of Anna Pavlovna's coolness? "Yes," she mused, "there was something unnatural about Anna Pavlovna, and utterly unlike her good nature, when she said angrily the day before yesterday: 'There, he will keep waiting for you; he wouldn't drink his coffee without you, though he's grown so dreadfully weak.

'" "Yes, perhaps, too, she didn't like it when I gave him the rug.

It was all so simple, but he took it so awkwardly, and was so long thanking me, that I felt awkward too.

And then that portrait of me he did so well.