“But you can do a great deal of good,” said Kish.

“Good, indeed!  You spoke to me yesterday of a mathematical man who is looking for a job.  Believe me, I can do as little for him as you can.  I can give money, but that’s not what he wants—­I asked a well-known musician to help a poor violinist, and this is what he answered:  ’You apply to me just because you are not a musician yourself.’  In the same way I say to you that you apply for help to me so confidently because you’ve never been in the position of a rich man.”

“Why you bring in the comparison with a well-known musician I don’t understand!” said Yulia Sergeyevna, and she flushed crimson.  “What has the well-known musician to do with it!”

Her face was quivering with hatred, and she dropped her eyes to conceal the feeling.  And not only her husband, but all the men sitting at the table, knew what the look in her face meant.

“What has the well-known musician got to do with it?” she said slowly.  “Why, nothing’s easier than helping some one poor.”

Silence followed.  Pyotr handed the woodcock, but they all refused it, and ate nothing but salad.  Laptev did not remember what he had said, but it was clear to him that it was not his words that were hateful, but the fact of his meddling in the conversation at all.

After supper he went into his study; intently, with a beating heart, expecting further humiliation, he listened to what was going on in the hall.  An argument had sprung up there again.  Then Yartsev sat down to the piano and played a sentimental song.  He was a man of varied accomplishments; he could play and sing, and even perform conjuring tricks.

“You may please yourselves, my friends, but I’m not going to stay at home,” said Yulia.  “We must go somewhere.”

They decided to drive out of town, and sent Kish to the merchant’s club to order a three-horse sledge.  They did not ask Laptev to go with them because he did not usually join these expeditions, and because his brother was sitting with him; but he took it to mean that his society bored them, and that he was not wanted in their light-hearted youthful company.  And his vexation, his bitter feeling, was so intense that he almost shed tears.  He was positively glad that he was treated so ungraciously, that he was scorned, that he was a stupid, dull husband, a money-bag; and it seemed to him, that he would have been even more glad if his wife were to deceive him that night with his best friend, and were afterwards to acknowledge it, looking at him with hatred. . . .  He was jealous on her account of their student friends, of actors, of singers, of Yartsev, even of casual acquaintances; and now he had a passionate longing for her really to be unfaithful to him.  He longed to find her in another man’s arms, and to be rid of this nightmare forever.  Fyodor was drinking tea, gulping it noisily.  But he, too, got up to go.

“Our old father must have got cataract,” he said, as he put on his fur coat.  “His sight has become very poor.”