vely hugging his
head and showering kisses on it.

"You are a clever, generous man, Dymov," she used to say, "but you have
one very serious defect. You take absolutely no interest in art. You
don't believe in music or painting."

"I don't understand them," he would say mildly. "I have spent all my
life in working at natural science and medicine, and I have never had
time to take an interest in the arts."

"But, you know, that's awful, Dymov!"

"Why so? Your friends don't know anything of science or medicine, but
you don't reproach them with it. Every one has his own line. I don't
understand landscapes and operas, but the way I look at it is that if
one set of sensible people devote their whole lives to them, and other
sensible people pay immense sums for them, they must be of use. I don't
understand them, but not understanding does not imply disbelieving in
them."

"Let me shake your honest hand!"

After dinner Olga Ivanovna would drive off to see her friends, then to a
theatre or to a concert, and she returned home after midnight. So it was
every day.

On Wednesdays she had "At Homes." At these "At Homes" the hostess
and her guests did not play cards and did not dance, but entertained
themselves with various arts. An actor from the Dramatic Theatre
recited, a singer sang, artists sketched in the albums of which Olga
Ivanovna had a great number, the violoncellist played, and the hostess
herself sketched, carved, sang, and played accompaniments. In the
intervals between the recitations, music, and singing, they talked
and argued about literature, the theatre, and painting. There were no
ladies, for Olga Ivanovna considered all ladies wearisome and vulgar
except actresses and her dressmaker. Not one of these entertainments
passed without the hostess starting at every ring at the bell, and
saying, with a triumphant expression, "It is he," meaning by "he," of
course, some new celebrity. Dymov was not in the drawing-room, and no
one remembered his existence. But exactly at half-past eleven the door
leading into the dining-room opened, and Dymov would appear with his
good-natured, gentle smile and say, rubbing his hands:

"Come to supper, gentlemen."

They all went into the dining-room, and every time found on the table
exactly the same things: a dish of oysters, a piece of ham or veal,
sardines, cheese, caviare, mushrooms, vodka, and two decanters of wine.

"My dear _maitre d' hotel!_" Olga Ivanovna would say, c