Princess Marya was left alone. She did not act upon Liza’s
wishes, she did not re-arrange her hair, she did not even glance into the
looking-glass. Letting her eyes and her hands drop helplessly, she sat mentally
dreaming. She pictured her husband, a man, a strong masterful, and
inconceivably attractive creature, who would bear her away all at once into an
utterly different, happy world of his own. A child, her own, like the baby she
had seen at her old nurse’s daughter’s, she fancied at her own breast. The
husband standing, gazing tenderly at her and the child. “But no, it can never
be, I am too ugly,” she thought.
“Kindly come to tea. The prince will be going in immediately,” said the maid’s voice at the door. She started and was horrified at what she had been thinking. And before going downstairs she went into the oratory, and fixing her eyes on the black outline of the great image of the Saviour, she stood for several minutes before it with clasped hands. Princess Marya’s soul was full of an agonizing doubt. Could the joy of love, of earthly love for a man, be for her? In her reveries of marriage, Princess Marya dreamed of happiness in a home and children of her own, but her chief, her strongest and most secret dream was of earthly love. The feeling became the stronger the more she tried to conceal it from others, and even from herself. “My God,” she said, “how am I to subdue in my heart these temptings of the devil? How am I to renounce for ever all evil thoughts, so as in peace to fulfil Thy will?” And scarcely had she put this question than God’s answer came to her in her own heart. “Desire nothing for thyself, be not covetous, anxious, envious. The future of men and thy destiny too must be unknown for thee; but live that thou mayest be ready for all. If it shall be God’s will to prove thee in the duties of marriage, be ready to obey His will.” With this soothing thought (though still she hoped for the fulfillment of that forbidden earthly dream) Princess Marya crossed herself, sighing, and went downstairs, without thinking of her dress nor how her hair was done; of how she would go in nor what she would say. What could all that signify beside the guidance of Him, without Whose will not one hair falls from the head of man?
[translation: Constance Garnett]