and the marvel of Peru floated in at the open
window. The moonlight lay in green patches on the floor and on the
piano in the big dark dining-room. Kovrin remembered the raptures
of the previous summer when there had been the same scent of the
marvel of Peru and the moon had shone in at the window. To bring
back the mood of last year he went quickly to his study, lighted a
strong cigar, and told the footman to bring him some wine. But the
cigar left a bitter and disgusting taste in his mouth, and the wine
had not the same flavour as it had the year before. And so great
is the effect of giving up a habit, the cigar and the two gulps of
wine made him giddy, and brought on palpitations of the heart, so
that he was obliged to take bromide.

Before going to bed, Tanya said to him:

"Father adores you. You are cross with him about something, and it
is killing him. Look at him; he is ageing, not from day to day, but
from hour to hour. I entreat you, Andryusha, for God's sake, for
the sake of your dead father, for the sake of my peace of mind, be
affectionate to him."

"I can't, I don't want to."

"But why?" asked Tanya, beginning to tremble all over. "Explain
why."

"Because he is antipathetic to me, that's all," said Kovrin carelessly;
and he shrugged his shoulders. "But we won't talk about him: he is
your father."

"I can't understand, I can't," said Tanya, pressing her hands to
her temples and staring at a fixed point. "Something incomprehensible,
awful, is going on in the house. You have changed, grown unlike
yourself. . . . You, clever, extraordinary man as you are, are
irritated over trifles, meddle in paltry nonsense. . . . Such trivial
things excite you, that sometimes one is simply amazed and can't
believe that it is you. Come, come, don't be angry, don't be angry,"
she went on, kissing his hands, frightened of her own words. "You
are clever, kind, noble. You will be just to father. He is so good."

"He is not good; he is just good-natured. Burlesque old uncles like
your father, with well-fed, good-natured faces, extraordinarily
hospitable and queer, at one time used to touch me and amuse me in
novels and in farces and in life; now I dislike them. They are
egoists to the marrow of their bones. What disgusts me most of all
is their being so well-fed, and that purely bovine, purely hoggish
optimism of a full stomach."

Tanya sat down on the bed and laid her head on the pillow.

"This is torture," she said,