The matchmaker dropped a tear, laughed, and, in token of her consent, clinked glasses with Stytchkin.

“Well,” said the happy railway guard, “now allow me to explain to you the behaviour and manner of life I desire from you. . . .  I am a strict, respectable, practical man.  I take a gentlemanly view of everything.  And I desire that my wife should be strict also, and should understand that to her I am a benefactor and the foremost person in the world.”

He sat down, and, heaving a deep sigh, began expounding to his bride-elect his views on domestic life and a wife’s duties.

THE LOOKING-GLASS

New year’s eve.  Nellie, the daughter of a landowner and general, a young and pretty girl, dreaming day and night of being married, was sitting in her room, gazing with exhausted, half-closed eyes into the looking-glass.  She was pale, tense, and as motionless as the looking-glass.

The non-existent but apparent vista of a long, narrow corridor with endless rows of candles, the reflection of her face, her hands, of the frame—­all this was already clouded in mist and merged into a boundless grey sea.  The sea was undulating, gleaming and now and then flaring crimson. . . .

Looking at Nellie’s motionless eyes and parted lips, one could hardly say whether she was asleep or awake, but nevertheless she was seeing.  At first she saw only the smile and soft, charming expression of someone’s eyes, then against the shifting grey background there gradually appeared the outlines of a head, a face, eyebrows, beard.  It was he, the destined one, the object of long dreams and hopes.  The destined one was for Nellie everything, the significance of life, personal happiness, career, fate.  Outside him, as on the grey background of the looking-glass, all was dark, empty, meaningless.  And so it was not strange that, seeing before her a handsome, gently smiling face, she was conscious of bliss, of an unutterably sweet dream that could not be expressed in speech or on paper.  Then she heard his voice, saw herself living under the same roof with him, her life merged into his.  Months and years flew by against the grey background.  And Nellie saw her future distinctly in all its details.

Picture followed picture against the grey background.  Now Nellie saw herself one winter night knocking at the door of Stepan Lukitch, the district doctor.  The old dog hoarsely and lazily barked behind the gate.  The doctor’s windows were in darkness.  All was silence.

“For God’s sake, for God’s sake!” whispered Nellie.

But at last the garden gate creaked and Nellie saw the doctor’s cook.

“Is the doctor at home?”

“His honour’s asleep,” whispered the cook into her sleeve, as though afraid of waking her master.

“He’s only just got home from his fever patients, and gave orders he was not to be waked.”