elf at the University, and go and live with Lubotshka
in Italy for two years. Next, the plan would be that he should buy an
estate on the south coast of the Crimea, and take us for an annual visit
there; next, that we should migrate en masse to St. Petersburg; and so
forth. Yet, in addition to this unusual cheerfulness of his, another
change had come over him of late--a change which greatly surprised
me. This was that he had had some fashionable clothes made--an
olive-coloured frockcoat, smart trousers with straps at the sides, and a
long wadded greatcoat which fitted him to perfection. Often, too, there
was a delightful smell of scent about him when he came home from a
party--more especially when he had been to see a lady of whom Mimi never
spoke but with a sigh and a face that seemed to say: "Poor orphans! How
dreadful! It is a good thing that SHE is gone now!" and so on, and
so on. From Nicola (for Papa never spoke to us of his gambling) I had
learnt that he (Papa) had been very fortunate in play that winter, and
so had won an extraordinary amount of money, all of which he had
placed in the bank after vowing that he would play no more that spring.
Evidently, it was his fear of being unable to resist again doing so that
was rendering him anxious to leave for the country as soon as possible.
Indeed, he ended by deciding not to wait until I had entered the
University, but to take the girls to Petrovskoe immediately after
Easter, and to leave Woloda and myself to follow them at a later season.

All that winter, until the opening of spring, Woloda had been
inseparable from Dubkoff, while at the same time the pair of them had
cooled greatly towards Dimitri. Their chief amusements (so I gathered
from conversations overheard) were continual drinking of champagne,
sledge-driving past the windows of a lady with whom both of them
appeared to be in love, and dancing with her--not at children's parties,
either, but at real balls! It was this last fact which, despite our love
for one another, placed a vast gulf between Woloda and myself. We felt
that the distance between a boy still taking lessons under a tutor and
a man who danced at real, grown-up balls was too great to allow of their
exchanging mutual ideas. Katenka, too, seemed grown-up now, and read
innumerable novels; so that the idea that she would some day be getting
married no longer seemed to me a joke. Yet, though she and Woloda were
thus grown-up, they never made friend