he only
conceivable purpose of my doing so--to force him to confess to the
faults of which I had accused him--could not possibly be attained at the
present moment, when he was in a rage. Had he, on the other hand, been
in a condition to argue calmly, I should probably never have said what I
did.

The dispute was verging upon an open quarrel when Dimitri suddenly
became silent, and left the room. I pursued him, and continued what I
was saying, but he did not answer. I knew that his failings included a
hasty temper, and that he was now fighting it down; wherefore I cursed
his good resolutions the more in my heart.

This, then, was what our rule of frankness had brought us to--the rule
that we should "tell one another everything in our minds, and never
discuss one another with a third person!" Many a time we had exaggerated
frankness to the pitch of making mutual confession of the most shameless
thoughts, and of shaming ourselves by voicing to one another proposals
or schemes for attaining our desires; yet those confessions had not
only failed to draw closer the tie which united us, but had dissipated
sympathy and thrust us further apart, until now pride would not allow
him to expose his feelings even in the smallest detail, and we employed
in our quarrel the very weapons which we had formerly surrendered to one
another--the weapons which could strike the shrewdest blows!

XLII. OUR STEPMOTHER

Notwithstanding that Papa had not meant to return to Moscow before the
New Year, he arrived in October, when there was still good riding to
hounds to be had in the country. He alleged as his reason for changing
his mind that his suit was shortly to come on before the Senate, but
Mimi averred that Avdotia had found herself so ennuyee in the country,
and had so often talked about Moscow and pretended to be unwell, that
Papa had decided to accede to her wishes. "You see, she never really
loved him--she and her love only kept buzzing about his ears because she
wanted to marry a rich man," added Mimi with a pensive sigh which said:
"To think what a certain other person could have done for him if only he
had valued her!"

Yet that "certain other person" was unjust to Avdotia, seeing that
the latter's affection for Papa--the passionate, devoted love of
self-abandonment--revealed itself in her every look and word and
movement. At the same time, that love in no way hindered her, not only
from being averse to parting with her ador