Prince Vasili always spoke languidly,
like an actor repeating a stale part.
Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary,
despite her forty years,
overflowed with animation and impulsiveness.
To be an enthusiast had become her social vocation and,
sometimes even when she did not feel like it,
she became enthusiastic in order not to
disappoint the expectations of those who knew her.
The subdued smile which,
though it did not suit her faded features,
always played round her lips expressed,
as in a spoiled child,
a continual consciousness of
her charming defect,
which she neither wished,
nor could,
nor considered it necessary, to correct.