“Do you publish your stories in magazines?” Startsev asked Vera Iosifovna.

“No,” she answered.  “I never publish.  I write it and put it away in my cupboard.  Why publish?” she explained.  “We have enough to live on.”

And for some reason every one sighed.

“And now, Kitten, you play something,” Ivan Petrovitch said to his daughter.

The lid of the piano was raised and the music lying ready was opened.  Ekaterina Ivanovna sat down and banged on the piano with both hands, and then banged again with all her might, and then again and again; her shoulders and bosom shook.  She obstinately banged on the same notes, and it sounded as if she would not leave off until she had hammered the keys into the piano.  The drawing-room was filled with the din; everything was resounding; the floor, the ceiling, the furniture. . . .  Ekaterina Ivanovna was playing a difficult passage, interesting simply on account of its difficulty, long and monotonous, and Startsev, listening, pictured stones dropping down a steep hill and going on dropping, and he wished they would leave off dropping; and at the same time Ekaterina Ivanovna, rosy from the violent exercise, strong and vigorous, with a lock of hair falling over her forehead, attracted him very much.  After the winter spent at Dyalizh among patients and peasants, to sit in a drawing-room, to watch this young, elegant, and, in all probability, pure creature, and to listen to these noisy, tedious but still cultured sounds, was so pleasant, so novel. . . .

“Well, Kitten, you have played as never before,” said Ivan Petrovitch, with tears in his eyes, when his daughter had finished and stood up.  “Die, Denis; you won’t write anything better.”

All flocked round her, congratulated her, expressed astonishment, declared that it was long since they had heard such music, and she listened in silence with a faint smile, and her whole figure was expressive of triumph.

“Splendid, superb!”

“Splendid,” said Startsev, too, carried away by the general enthusiasm.  “Where have you studied?” he asked Ekaterina Ivanovna.  “At the Conservatoire?”

“No, I am only preparing for the Conservatoire, and till now have been working with Madame Zavlovsky.”

“Have you finished at the high school here?”

“Oh, no,” Vera Iosifovna answered for her, “We have teachers for her at home; there might be bad influences at the high school or a boarding school, you know.  While a young girl is growing up, she ought to be under no influence but her mother’s.”

“All the same, I’m going to the Conservatoire,” said Ekaterina Ivanovna.

“No.  Kitten loves her mamma.  Kitten won’t grieve papa and mamma.”

“No, I’m going, I’m going,” said Ekaterina Ivanovna, with playful caprice and stamping her foot.

And at supper it was Ivan Petrovitch who displayed his talents.  Laughing only with his eyes, he told anecdotes, made epigrams, asked ridiculous riddles and answered them himself, talking the whole time in his extraordinary language, evolved in the course of prolonged practice in witticism and evidently now become a habit:  “Badsome,” “Hugeous,” “Thank you most dumbly,” and so on.