" With a dismayed and guilty expression, Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped and would have gone back unobserved.

But reflecting that this would be undignified, he turned back again, and clearing his throat, he went up to the bedroom.

The voices were silent, and he went in.

Anna, in a gray dressing gown, with a crop of short clustering black curls on her round head, was sitting on a settee.

The eagerness died out of her face, as it always did, at the sight of her husband; she dropped her head and looked round uneasily at Betsy.