Covers his face with his hands and sits silent.  Enter PELAGEYA EGOROVNA, dressed in winter clothes; she stops in the doorway.

SCENE III

MITYA and PELAGEYA EGOROVNA

PELAGEYA EGOROVNA.  Mitya, Mitya dear!

MITYA.  What do you want?

PELAGEYA EGOROVNA.  Come up to us later on in the evening, my dear, and play with the girls.  We’re going to sing songs.

MITYA.  Thank you exceedingly, I shall make it my first duty.

PELAGEYA EGOROVNA.  Why are you always sitting alone in the office?  It’s not very cheerful!  You’ll come, won’t you?  Gordey Karpych won’t be at home.

MITYA.  Good, I shall come without fail.

PELAGEYA EGOROVNA.  He’s going off again, you see; he’s going off there to that friend of his—­what’s his name?

MITYA.  To Afrikan Savvich?

PELAGEYA EGOROVNA.  Yes, yes!  He’s quite gone on him!  Lord forgive him!

MITYA.  Take a seat, Pelageya Egorovna. [Fetches a chair.

PELAGEYA EGOROVNA.  Oh, I have no time.  Well, yes, I’ll sit down a bit. [Sits down] Now just think, what a misfortune!  Really, they’ve become such friends that it beats everything!  Yes, that’s what it’s come to!  And why?  What’s the use of it all?  Tell me that, pray.  Isn’t Afrikan Savvich a coarse, drunken fellow?  Isn’t he?

MITYA.  Perhaps Gordey Karpych has some business with Afrikan Savvich.

PELAGEYA EGOROVNA.  What sort of business!  He has no business at all.  You see Afrikan Savvich is always drinking with that Englishman.  He has an Englishman as director of his factory, and they drink together!  But he’s no fit company for my husband.  But can you reason with him?  Just think how proud he is!  He says to me:  “There isn’t a soul here to speak to; all,” he says, “are rabble, all, you see, are just so many peasants, and they live like peasants.  But that man, you see, is from Moscow—­lives mostly in Moscow—­and he’s rich.”  And whatever has happened to him?  Well, you see, it was all of a sudden, my dear boy, all of a sudden!  He used to have so much sense.  Well, we lived, of course not luxuriously, but all the same pretty fairly decently; and then last year he went for a trip, and he caught it from some one.  He caught it, he caught it, they have told me so—­caught all these tricks.  Now he doesn’t care for any of our Russian ways.  He keeps harping on this:  “I want to be up to date, I want to be in the fashion.  Yes, yes!  Put on a cap,” he says!  What an idea to get!  Am I going to try to charm any one in my old age and make myself look lovely?  Bah!  You just try to do anything with him.  He never drank before—­really he didn’t—­but now he drinks with this Afrikan.  It must be that drink has turned his brain [points to her head] and muddled him.... [Silence] I think now that the devil has got hold of him!  Why can’t he have some