Foma did not like to hear
music--it always filled him with sadness. Even when the "machine" in the
tavern played some sad tune, his heart filled with melancholy anguish,
and he would either ask them to stop the "machine" or would go away some
little distance feeling that he could not listen calmly to these
tunes without words, but full of lamentation and tears. And now he
involuntarily stopped short at the door of the drawing-room.

A curtain of long strings of parti-coloured glass beads hung over the
door. The beads had been strung so as to form a fantastic figure of some
kind of plants; the strings were quietly shaking and it seemed that pale
shadows of flowers were soaring in the air. This transparent curtain did
not hide the inside of the drawing-room from Foma's eyes. Seated on a
couch in her favourite corner, Medinskaya played the mandolin. A large
Japanese umbrella, fastened up to the wall, shaded the little woman
in black by its mixture of colours; the high bronze lamp under a red
lamp-shade cast on her the light of sunset. The mild sounds of the
slender strings were trembling sadly in the narrow room, which was
filled with soft and fragrant twilight. Now the woman lowered the
mandolin on her knees and began running her fingers over the strings,
also to examine fixedly something before her. Foma heaved a sigh.

A soft sound of music soared about Medinskaya, and her face was forever
changing as though shadows were falling on it, falling and melting away
under the flash of her eyes.

Foma looked at her and saw that when alone she was not quite so
good-looking as in the presence of people--now her face looked
older, more serious--her eyes had not the expression of kindness and
gentleness, they had a rather tired and weary look. And her pose,
too, was weary, as if the woman were about to stir but could not. Foma
noticed that the feeling which prompted him to come to her was now
changing in his heart into some other feeling. He scraped with his foot
along the floor and coughed.

"Who is that?" asked the woman, starting with alarm. And the strings
trembled, issuing an alarmed sound.

"It is I," said Foma, pushing aside the strings of the beads.

"Ah! But how quietly you've entered. I am glad to see you. Be seated!
Why didn't you come for such a long time?"

Holding out her hand to him, she pointed with the other at a small
armchair beside her, and her eyes were gaily smiling.

"I was out on the bay inspectin