d. . . ."

When, an hour later, he put on his fur coat in the hall, he was
smiling again and ashamed to face the servant. Laptev went with him
to Pyatnitsky Street.

"Come and have dinner with us to-morrow," he said on the way, holding
him by the arm, "and at Easter we'll go abroad together. You
absolutely must have a change, or you'll be getting quite morbid."

When he got home Laptev found his wife in a state of great nervous
agitation. The scene with Fyodor had upset her, and she could not
recover her composure. She wasn't crying but kept tossing on the
bed, clutching with cold fingers at the quilt, at the pillows, at
her husband's hands. Her eyes looked big and frightened.

"Don't go away from me, don't go away," she said to her husband.
"Tell me, Alyosha, why have I left off saying my prayers? What has
become of my faith? Oh, why did you talk of religion before me?
You've shaken my faith, you and your friends. I never pray now."

He put compresses on her forehead, chafed her hands, gave her tea
to drink, while she huddled up to him in terror. . . .

Towards morning she was worn out and fell asleep, while Laptev sat
beside her and held her hand. So that he could get no sleep. The
whole day afterwards he felt shattered and dull, and wandered
listlessly about the rooms without a thought in his head.

XVI

The doctor said that Fyodor's mind was affected. Laptev did not
know what to do in his father's house, while the dark warehouse in
which neither his father nor Fyodor ever appeared now seemed to him
like a sepulchre. When his wife told him that he absolutely must
go every day to the warehouse and also to his father's, he either
said nothing, or began talking irritably of his childhood, saying
that it was beyond his power to forgive his father for his past,
that the warehouse and the house in Pyatnitsky Street were hateful
to him, and so on.

One Sunday morning Yulia went herself to Pyatnitsky Street. She
found old Fyodor Stepanovitch in the same big drawing-room in which
the service had been held on her first arrival. Wearing slippers,
and without a cravat, he was sitting motionless in his arm-chair,
blinking with his sightless eyes.

"It's I--your daughter-in-law," she said, going up to him. "I've
come to see how you are."

He began breathing heavily with excitement.

Touched by his affliction and his loneliness, she kissed his hand;
and he passed his hand over her face and head, and having satisfied