"The carriage is ready," said Matvey; "but there's some one to

see you with a petition."

"Been here long?" asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"Half an hour."

"How many times have I told you to tell me at once?"

"One must let you drink your coffee in peace, at least," said

Matvey, in the affectionately gruff tone with which it was

impossible to be angry.

"Well, show the person up at once," said Oblonsky, frowning with

vexation.

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The petitioner, the widow of a staff captain Kalinin, came with a

request impossible and unreasonable; but Stepan Arkadyevitch, as

he generally did, made her sit down, heard her to the end

attentively without interrupting her, and gave her detailed

advice as to how and to whom to apply, and even wrote her, in his

large, sprawling, good and legible hand, a confident and fluent

little note to a personage who might be of use to her. Having

got rid of the staff captain's widow, Stepan Arkadyevitch took

his hat and stopped to recollect whether he had forgotten

anything. It appeared that he had forgotten nothing except what

he wanted to forget--his wife.

"Ah, yes!" He bowed his head, and his handsome face assumed a

harassed expression. "To go, or not to go!" he said to himself;

and an inner voice told him he must not go, that nothing could

come of it but falsity; that to amend, to set right their

relations was impossible, because it was impossible to make her

attractive again and able to inspire love, or to make him an old

man, not susceptible to love. Except deceit and lying nothing

could come of it now; and deceit and lying were opposed to his

nature.

"It must be some time, though: it can't go on like this," he

said, trying to give himself courage. He squared his chest, took

out a cigarette, took two whiffs at it, flung it into a

mother-of-pearl ashtray, and with rapid steps walked through the

drawing room, and opened the other door into his wife's bedroom.




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