ts," she said, and laughed. "Have you been
home?" she asked after a pause.

"No."

Nikitin knew already that Captain Polyansky, on whom Varya had been
building great hopes of late, was being transferred to one of the
western provinces, and was already making his farewell visits in
the town, and so it was depressing at his father-in-law's.

"Varya looked in this evening," said Masha, sitting up. "She did
not say anything, but one could see from her face how wretched she
is, poor darling! I can't bear Polyansky. He is fat and bloated,
and when he walks or dances his cheeks shake. . . . He is not a man
I would choose. But, still, I did think he was a decent person."

"I think he is a decent person now," said Nikitin.

"Then why has he treated Varya so badly?"

"Why badly?" asked Nikitin, beginning to feel irritation against
the white cat, who was stretching and arching its back. "As far as
I know, he has made no proposal and has given her no promises."

"Then why was he so often at the house? If he didn't mean to marry
her, he oughtn't to have come."

Nikitin put out the candle and got into bed. But he felt disinclined
to lie down and to sleep. He felt as though his head were immense
and empty as a barn, and that new, peculiar thoughts were wandering
about in it like tall shadows. He thought that, apart from the soft
light of the ikon lamp, that beamed upon their quiet domestic
happiness, that apart from this little world in which he and this
cat lived so peacefully and happily, there was another world. . . .
And he had a passionate, poignant longing to be in that other
world, to work himself at some factory or big workshop, to address
big audiences, to write, to publish, to raise a stir, to exhaust
himself, to suffer. . . . He wanted something that would engross
him till he forgot himself, ceased to care for the personal happiness
which yielded him only sensations so monotonous. And suddenly there
rose vividly before his imagination the figure of Shebaldin with
his clean-shaven face, saying to him with horror: "You haven't even
read Lessing! You are quite behind the times! How you have gone to
seed!"

Masha woke up and again drank some water. He glanced at her neck,
at her plump shoulders and throat, and remembered the word the
brigadier-general had used in church--"rose."

"Rose," he muttered, and laughed.

His laugh was answered by a sleepy growl from Mushka under the bed:
"Rrr . . . nga-nga-nga . . . !"