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‘How’s mama?’ he asked, his hand stroking his daughter’s smooth, tender neck. ‘Good morning,’ he said, smiling to the boy who greeted him.

He was aware that he loved the boy less, and always tried to be fair; but the boy felt it and did not respond with a smile to the cold smile of his father.

‘Mama? Mama’s up,’ the girl replied.

Stepan Arkadyich sighed. ‘That means again she didn’t sleep all night,’ he thought.

‘And is she cheerful?’

The girl knew that there had been a quarrel between her father and mother, and that her mother could not be cheerful, and that her father ought to know it, and that he was shamming when he asked about it so lightly. And she blushed for him. He understood it at once and also blushed.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘She told us not to study, but to go for a walk to grandma’s with Miss Hull.’

‘Well, go then, my Tanchurochka. Ah, yes, wait,’ he said, still holding her back and stroking her tender little hand.

He took a box of sweets from the mantelpiece, where he had put it yesterday, and gave her two, picking her favourites, a chocolate and a cream.

‘For Grisha?’ the girl said, pointing to the chocolate.

‘Yes, yes.’ And stroking her little shoulder once more, he kissed her on the nape of the neck and let her go.

‘The carriage is ready,’ said Matvei. ‘And there’s a woman with a petition to see you,’ he added.

‘Has she been here long?’ asked Stepan Arkadyich.

‘Half an hour or so.’

‘How often must I tell you to let me know at once!’

‘I had to give you time for your coffee at least,’ Matvei said in that friendly-rude tone at which it was impossible to be angry.

‘Well, quickly send her in,’ said Oblonsky, wincing with vexation.

The woman, Mrs Kalinin, a staff captain’s wife, was petitioning for something impossible and senseless; but Stepan Arkadyich, as was his custom, sat her down, heard her out attentively without interrupting, and gave her detailed advice on whom to address and how, and even wrote, briskly and fluently, in his large, sprawling, handsome and clear handwriting, a little note to the person who could be of help to her. Having dismissed the captain’s wife, Stepan Arkadyich picked up his hat and paused, wondering whether he had forgotten anything. It turned out that he had forgotten nothing, except what he had wanted to forget- his wife.

‘Ah, yes!’ He hung his head, and his handsome face assumed a wistful expression. ‘Shall I go or not?’ he said to himself. And his inner voice told him that he should not go, that there could be nothing here but falseness, that to rectify, to repair, their relations was impossible, because it was impossible to make her attractive and arousing of love again or to make him an old man incapable of love. Nothing could come of it now but falseness and deceit, and falseness and deceit were contrary to his nature.

‘But at some point I’ll have to; it can’t remain like this,’ he said, trying to pluck up his courage. He squared his shoulders, took out a cigarette, lit it, took two puffs, threw it into the mother-of-pearl ashtray, walked with quick steps across the gloomy drawing room and opened the other door, to his wife’s bedroom.

IV

Darya Alexandrovna, wearing a dressing-jacket, the skimpy braids of her once thick and beautiful hair pinned at the back of her head, her face pinched and thin, her big, frightened eyes protruding on account of that thinness, was standing before an open chiffonier, taking something out of it. Various articles lay scattered about the room. Hearing her husband’s footsteps, she stopped, looked at the door and vainly tried to give her face a stern and contemptuous expression. She felt that she was afraid of him and of the impending meeting. She had just been trying to do something she had already tried to do ten times in those three days: to choose some of her own and the children’s things to take to her mother’s - and again she could not make up her mind to do it; but now, as each time before, she told herself that things could not remain like this, that she had