s the paper, but I daresay he has nothing to eat."

I never went home to see my own people. When I came back from work
I often found waiting for me little notes, brief and anxious, in
which my sister wrote to me about my father; that he had been
particularly preoccupied at dinner and had eaten nothing, or that
he had been giddy and staggering, or that he had locked himself in
his room and had not come out for a long time. Such items of news
troubled me; I could not sleep, and at times even walked up and
down Great Dvoryansky Street at night by our house, looking in at
the dark windows and trying to guess whether everything was well
at home. On Sundays my sister came to see me, but came in secret,
as though it were not to see me but our nurse. And if she came in
to see me she was very pale, with tear-stained eyes, and she began
crying at once.

"Our father will never live through this," she would say. "If
anything should happen to him--God grant it may not--your
conscience will torment you all your life. It's awful, Misail; for
our mother's sake I beseech you: reform your ways."

"My darling sister," I would say, "how can I reform my ways if I
am convinced that I am acting in accordance with my conscience? Do
understand!"

"I know you are acting on your conscience, but perhaps it could be
done differently, somehow, so as not to wound anybody."

"Ah, holy Saints!" the old woman sighed through the door. "Your
life is ruined! There will be trouble, my dears, there will be
trouble!"

VI

One Sunday Dr. Blagovo turned up unexpectedly. He was wearing a
military tunic over a silk shirt and high boots of patent leather.

"I have come to see you," he began, shaking my hand heartily like
a student. "I am hearing about you every day, and I have been meaning
to come and have a heart-to-heart talk, as they say. The boredom
in the town is awful, there is not a living soul, no one to say a
word to. It's hot, Holy Mother," he went on, taking off his tunic
and sitting in his silk shirt. "My dear fellow, let me talk to you."

I was dull myself, and had for a long time been craving for the
society of someone not a house painter. I was genuinely glad to see
him.

"I'll begin by saying," he said, sitting down on my bed, "that I
sympathize with you from the bottom of my heart, and deeply respect
the life you are leading. They don't understand you here in the
town, and, indeed, there is no one to understand, seeing that, as
you