had made no offer, but
in reality he felt that he had bound himself to her, that he had
promised to be hers. Yet he felt in all his being that he could not
marry her.

"It is shameful and disgusting," he repeated, not only of his
relations to Missy, but of everything. "Everything is disgusting and
shameful," he repeated to himself, as he ascended the steps of his
house.

"I shall take no supper," he said to Kornei, who followed him into the
dining-room, where the table was set for his supper. "You may go."

"All right," said Kornei, but did not go, and began to clear the
table. Nekhludoff looked at Kornei and an ill feeling sprung up in his
heart toward him. He wished to be left in peace, and it seemed as if
everybody were spitefully worrying him. When Kornei had left,
Nekhludoff went over to the _samovar_, intending to make some tea,
but, hearing the footsteps of Agrippina Petrovna, he hastily walked
into the drawing-room, closing the door behind him. This was the room
in which, three months ago, his mother had died. Now, as he entered
this room, lighted by two lamps with reflectors--one near a portrait
of his father, the other near a portrait of his mother--he thought of
his relations toward his mother, and these relations seemed to him
unnatural and repulsive. These, too, were shameful and disgusting. He
remembered how, during her last sickness, he wished her to die. He
said to himself that he wished it so that she might be spared the
suffering, but in reality he wished to spare himself the sight of her
suffering.

Desiring to call forth pleasant recollections about her, he looked at
her portrait, painted by a famous artist for five thousand rubles. She
was represented in a black velvet dress with bared breast. The artist
had evidently drawn with particular care the breast and the beautiful
shoulders and neck. That was particularly shameful and disgusting.
There was something revolting and sacriligious to him in this
representation of his mother as a denuded beauty, the more so because
three months ago she lay in this very room shrunken like a mummy, and
filling the entire house with an oppressive odor. He thought he could
smell the odor now. He remembered how, on the day before she died, she
took his strong, white hand into her own emaciated, discolored one,
and, looking into his eyes, said: "Do not judge me, Mitia, if I have
not done as I should," and her faded eyes filled with tears.

"How disgusting!" he