h, we'll send him away," Arina Prohorovna rapped out. "I don't know
what he looks like, he is simply frightening you; he is as white as a
corpse! What is it to you, tell me please, you absurd fellow? What a
farce!"

Shatov made no reply, he made up his mind to say nothing. "I've seen
many a foolish father, half crazy in such cases. But they, at any
rate..."

"Be quiet or leave me to die! Don't say another word! I won't have it, I
won't have it!" screamed Marie.

"It's impossible not to say another word, if you are not out of your
mind, as I think you are in your condition. We must talk of what we
want, anyway: tell me, have you anything ready? You answer, Shatov, she
is incapable."

"Tell me what's needed?"

"That means you've nothing ready." She reckoned up all that was quite
necessary, and one must do her the justice to say she only asked for
what was absolutely indispensable, the barest necessaries. Some things
Shatov had. Marie took out her key and held it out to him, for him to
look in her bag. As his hands shook he was longer than he should have
been opening the unfamiliar lock. Marie flew into a rage, but when Arina
Prohorovna rushed up to take the key from him, she would not allow her
on any account to look into her bag and with peevish cries and tears
insisted that no one should open the bag but Shatov.

Some things he had to fetch from Kirillov's. No sooner had Shatov turned
to go for them than she began frantically calling him back and was only
quieted when Shatov had rushed impetuously back from the stairs, and
explained that he should only be gone a minute to fetch something
indispensable and would be back at once.

"Well, my lady, it's hard to please you," laughed Arina Prohorovna, "one
minute he must stand with his face to the wall and not dare to look at
you, and the next he mustn't be gone for a minute, or you begin crying.
He may begin to imagine something. Come, come, don't be silly, don't
blubber, I was laughing, you know."

"He won't dare to imagine anything."

"Tut, tut, tut, if he didn't love you like a sheep he wouldn't run about
the streets with his tongue out and wouldn't have roused all the dogs in
the town. He broke my window-frame."

V

He found Kirillov still pacing up and down his room so preoccupied that
he had forgotten the arrival of Shatov's wife, and heard what he said
without understanding him.

"Oh, yes!" he recollected suddenly, as though tearing himself with an