to law with her, you'll admit. . . .
I beg you most earnestly, overlook it . . . stay on. _Tout
comprendre, tout pardonner._ Will you stay?"

"No!" said Mashenka resolutely, beginning to tremble. "Let me alone,
I entreat you!"

"Well, God bless you!" sighed Nikolay Sergeitch, sitting down on
the stool near the box. "I must own I like people who still can
feel resentment, contempt, and so on. I could sit here forever and
look at your indignant face. . . . So you won't stay, then? I
understand. . . . It's bound to be so. . . Yes, of course. . . .
It's all right for you, but for me--wo-o-o-o! . . . I can't stir
a step out of this cellar. I'd go off to one of our estates, but
in every one of them there are some of my wife's rascals. . .
stewards, experts, damn them all! They mortgage and remortgage. . . .
You mustn't catch fish, must keep off the grass, mustn't break
the trees."

"Nikolay Sergeitch!" his wife's voice called from the drawing-room.
"Agnia, call your master!"

"Then you won't stay?" asked Nikolay Sergeitch, getting up quickly
and going towards the door. "You might as well stay, really. In the
evenings I could come and have a talk with you. Eh? Stay! If you
go, there won't be a human face left in the house. It's awful!"

Nikolay Sergeitch's pale, exhausted face besought her, but Mashenka
shook her head, and with a wave of his hand he went out.

Half an hour later she was on her way.

IONITCH

I

WHEN visitors to the provincial town S---- complained of the
dreariness and monotony of life, the inhabitants of the town, as
though defending themselves, declared that it was very nice in
S----, that there was a library, a theatre, a club; that they had
balls; and, finally, that there were clever, agreeable, and interesting
families with whom one could make acquaintance. And they used to
point to the family of the Turkins as the most highly cultivated
and talented.

This family lived in their own house in the principal street, near
the Governor's. Ivan Petrovitch Turkin himself--a stout, handsome,
dark man with whiskers--used to get up amateur performances for
benevolent objects, and used to take the part of an elderly general
and cough very amusingly. He knew a number of anecdotes, charades,
proverbs, and was fond of being humorous and witty, and he always
wore an expression from which it was impossible to tell whether he
were joking or in earnest. His wife, Vera Iosifovna--a thin,
nice-looking lady