And she turned away and went out of the drawing-room to prevent herself from crying.

Startsev’s heart left off throbbing uneasily.  Going out of the club into the street, he first of all tore off the stiff tie and drew a deep breath.  He was a little ashamed and his vanity was wounded—­ he had not expected a refusal—­and could not believe that all his dreams, his hopes and yearnings, had led him up to such a stupid end, just as in some little play at an amateur performance, and he was sorry for his feeling, for that love of his, so sorry that he felt as though he could have burst into sobs or have violently belaboured Panteleimon’s broad back with his umbrella.

For three days he could not get on with anything, he could not eat nor sleep; but when the news reached him that Ekaterina Ivanovna had gone away to Moscow to enter the Conservatoire, he grew calmer and lived as before.

Afterwards, remembering sometimes how he had wandered about the cemetery or how he had driven all over the town to get a dress suit, he stretched lazily and said: 

“What a lot of trouble, though!”

IV

Four years had passed.  Startsev already had a large practice in the town.  Every morning he hurriedly saw his patients at Dyalizh, then he drove in to see his town patients.  By now he drove, not with a pair, but with a team of three with bells on them, and he returned home late at night.  He had grown broader and stouter, and was not very fond of walking, as he was somewhat asthmatic.  And Panteleimon had grown stout, too, and the broader he grew, the more mournfully he sighed and complained of his hard luck:  he was sick of driving!  Startsev used to visit various households and met many people, but did not become intimate with any one.  The inhabitants irritated him by their conversation, their views of life, and even their appearance.  Experience taught him by degrees that while he played cards or lunched with one of these people, the man was a peaceable, friendly, and even intelligent human being; that as soon as one talked of anything not eatable, for instance, of politics or science, he would be completely at a loss, or would expound a philosophy so stupid and ill-natured that there was nothing else to do but wave one’s hand in despair and go away.  Even when Startsev tried to talk to liberal citizens, saying, for instance, that humanity, thank God, was progressing, and that one day it would be possible to dispense with passports and capital punishment, the liberal citizen would look at him askance and ask him mistrustfully:  “Then any one could murder any one he chose in the open street?” And when, at tea or supper, Startsev observed in company that one should work, and that one ought not to live without working, every one took this as a reproach, and began to get angry and argue aggressively.  With all that, the inhabitants did nothing, absolutely nothing, and took no interest in anything, and it was quite impossible to think of anything to say.  And Startsev avoided conversation, and confined himself to eating and playing vint; and when there was a family festivity in some household and he was invited to a meal, then he sat and ate in silence, looking at his plate.