ates
of conscience might be definite, and that there might be nothing
vague in my mind. Yet, though he was the most cultivated and best
man in the town, he was nevertheless far from perfection. In his
manners, in his habit of turning every conversation into an argument,
in his pleasant tenor, even in his friendliness, there was something
coarse, like a divinity student, and when he took off his coat and
sat in his silk shirt, or flung a tip to a waiter in the restaurant,
I always fancied that culture might be all very well, but the Tatar
was fermenting in him still.

At Epiphany he went back to Petersburg. He went off in the morning,
and after dinner my sister came in. Without taking off her fur coat
and her cap she sat down in silence, very pale, and kept her eyes
fixed on the same spot. She was chilled by the frost and one could
see that she was upset by it.

"You must have caught cold," I said.

Her eyes filled with tears; she got up and went out to Karpovna
without saying a word to me, as though I had hurt her feelings. And
a little later I heard her saying, in a tone of bitter reproach:

"Nurse, what have I been living for till now? What? Tell me, haven't
I wasted my youth? All the best years of my life to know nothing
but keeping accounts, pouring out tea, counting the halfpence,
entertaining visitors, and thinking there was nothing better in the
world! Nurse, do understand, I have the cravings of a human being,
and I want to live, and they have turned me into something like a
housekeeper. It's horrible, horrible!"

She flung her keys towards the door, and they fell with a jingle
into my room. They were the keys of the sideboard, of the kitchen
cupboard, of the cellar, and of the tea-caddy, the keys which my
mother used to carry.

"Oh, merciful heavens!" cried the old woman in horror. "Holy Saints
above!"

Before going home my sister came into my room to pick up the keys,
and said:

"You must forgive me. Something queer has happened to me lately."

VIII

On returning home late one evening from Mariya Viktorovna's I found
waiting in my room a young police inspector in a new uniform; he
was sitting at my table, looking through my books.

"At last," he said, getting up and stretching himself. "This is the
third time I have been to you. The Governor commands you to present
yourself before him at nine o'clock in the morning. Without fail."

He took from me a signed statement that I would act upon his