w, my
dear. . . ."

Meier, who had been sitting motionless and silent all the time,
suddenly got up from the sofa and looked at his watch.

"I beg your pardon, Pavel Ilyitch," he said, "it is time for me to
be going."

But Pavel Ilyitch, who had not finished his remarks, put his arm
round him and, forcibly reseating him on the sofa, vowed that he
would not let him go without supper. And again Meier sat and listened,
but he looked at Rashevitch with perplexity and uneasiness, as
though he were only now beginning to understand him. Patches of red
came into his face. And when at last a maidservant came in to tell
them that the young ladies asked them to go to supper, he gave a
sigh of relief and was the first to walk out of the study.

At the table in the next room were Rashevitch's daughters, Genya
and Iraida, girls of four-and-twenty and two-and-twenty respectively,
both very pale, with black eyes, and exactly the same height. Genya
had her hair down, and Iraida had hers done up high on her head.
Before eating anything they each drank a wineglassful of bitter
liqueur, with an air as though they had drunk it by accident for
the first time in their lives and both were overcome with confusion
and burst out laughing.

"Don't be naughty, girls," said Rashevitch.

Genya and Iraida talked French with each other, and Russian with
their father and their visitor. Interrupting one another, and mixing
up French words with Russian, they began rapidly describing how
just at this time in August, in previous years, they had set off
to the hoarding school and what fun it had been. Now there was
nowhere to go, and they had to stay at their home in the country,
summer and winter without change. Such dreariness!

"Don't be naughty, girls," Rashevitch said again.

He wanted to be talking himself. If other people talked in his
presence, he suffered from a feeling like jealousy.

"So that's how it is, my dear boy," he began, looking affectionately
at Meier. "In the simplicity and goodness of our hearts, and from
fear of being suspected of being behind the times, we fraternize
with, excuse me, all sorts of riff-raff, we preach fraternity and
equality with money-lenders and innkeepers; but if we would only
think, we should see how criminal that good-nature is. We have
brought things to such a pass, that the fate of civilization is
hanging on a hair. My dear fellow, what our forefathers gained in
the course of ages will be to-morrow,