o have tea with him. He was pacing up and down with
his hands in his pockets, humming, "Ru-ru-ru"; this meant that he
was dissatisfied with something.

"You have a gay time of it in Moscow," he said. "I am very glad for
your sake. . . . I'm an old man and I need nothing. I shall soon
give up the ghost and set you all free. And the wonder is that my
hide is so tough, that I'm alive still! It's amazing!"

He said that he was a tough old ass that every one rode on. They
had thrust on him the care of Nina Fyodorovna, the worry of her
children, and of her burial; and that coxcomb Panaurov would not
trouble himself about it, and had even borrowed a hundred roubles
from him and had never paid it back.

"Take me to Moscow and put me in a madhouse," said the doctor. "I'm
mad; I'm a simple child, as I still put faith in truth and justice."

Then he found fault with her husband for his short-sightedness in
not buying houses that were being sold so cheaply. And now it seemed
to Yulia that she was not the one joy in this old man's life. While
he was seeing his patients, and afterwards going his rounds, she
walked through all the rooms, not knowing what to do or what to
think about. She had already grown strange to her own town and her
own home. She felt no inclination to go into the streets or see her
friends; and at the thought of her old friends and her life as a
girl, she felt no sadness nor regret for the past.

In the evening she dressed a little more smartly and went to the
evening service. But there were only poor people in the church, and
her splendid fur coat and hat made no impression. And it seemed to
her that there was some change in the church as well as in herself.
In old days she had loved it when they read the prayers for the day
at evening service, and the choir sang anthems such as "I will open
my lips." She liked moving slowly in the crowd to the priest who
stood in the middle of the church, and then to feel the holy oil
on her forehead; now she only waited for the service to be over.
And now, going out of the church, she was only afraid that beggars
would ask for alms; it was such a bore to have to stop and feel for
her pockets; besides, she had no coppers in her pocket now--nothing
but roubles.

She went to bed early, and was a long time in going to sleep. She
kept dreaming of portraits of some sort, and of the funeral procession
she had met that morning. The open coffin with the dead body was
carried in