but, you know,
it's difficult when you're not used to it, and she is young, too.
The servants call her 'Miss'; it seems a trifle, but it upsets her.
There it is, brother."

Zina brought in a plateful of strawberries. She was followed by a
little maidservant, looking crushed and humble, who set a jug of
milk on the table and made a very low bow: she had something about
her that was in keeping with the old furniture, something petrified
and dreary.

The sound of the rain had ceased. Pyotr Mihalitch ate strawberries
while Vlassitch and Zina looked at him in silence. The moment of
the inevitable but useless conversation was approaching, and all
three felt the burden of it. Pyotr Mihalitch's eyes filled with
tears again; he pushed away his plate and said that he must be going
home, or it would be getting late, and perhaps it would rain again.
The time had come when common decency required Zina to speak of
those at home and of her new life.

"How are things at home?" she asked rapidly, and her pale face
quivered. "How is mother?"

"You know mother . . ." said Pyotr Mihalitch, not looking at her.

"Petrusha, you've thought a great deal about what has happened,"
she said, taking hold of her brother's sleeve, and he knew how hard
it was for her to speak. "You've thought a great deal: tell me, can
we reckon on mother's accepting Grigory . . . and the whole position,
one day?"

She stood close to her brother, face to face with him, and he was
astonished that she was so beautiful, and that he seemed not to
have noticed it before. And it seemed to him utterly absurd that
his sister, so like his mother, pampered, elegant, should be living
with Vlassitch and in Vlassitch's house, with the petrified servant,
and the table with six legs--in the house where a man had been
flogged to death, and that she was not going home with him, but was
staying here to sleep.

"You know mother," he said, not answering her question. "I think
you ought to have . . . to do something, to ask her forgiveness or
something. . . ."

"But to ask her forgiveness would mean pretending we had done wrong.
I'm ready to tell a lie to comfort mother, but it won't lead anywhere.
I know mother. Well, what will be, must be!" said Zina, growing
more cheerful now that the most unpleasant had been said. "We'll
wait for five years, ten years, and be patient, and then God's will
be done."

She took her brother's arm, and when she walked through the dark
hall sh