He had never been so polite before, and Laptev saw that he knew of his offer; he did not like that either.  He was sitting now in the drawing-room, and the room impressed him strangely, with its poor, common decorations, its wretched pictures, and though there were arm-chairs in it, and a huge lamp with a shade over it, it still looked like an uninhabited place, a huge barn, and it was obvious that no one could feel at home in such a room, except a man like the doctor.  The next room, almost twice as large, was called the reception-room, and in it there were only rows of chairs, as though for a dancing class.  And while Laptev was sitting in the drawing-room talking to the doctor about his sister, he began to be tortured by a suspicion.  Had not Yulia Sergeyevna been to his sister Nina’s, and then brought him here to tell him that she would accept him?  Oh, how awful it was!  But the most awful thing of all was that his soul was capable of such a suspicion.  And he imagined how the father and the daughter had spent the evening, and perhaps the night before, in prolonged consultation, perhaps dispute, and at last had come to the conclusion that Yulia had acted thoughtlessly in refusing a rich man.  The words that parents use in such cases kept ringing in his ears: 

“It is true you don’t love him, but think what good you could do!”

The doctor was going out to see patients.  Laptev would have gone with him, but Yulia Sergeyevna said: 

“I beg you to stay.”

She was distressed and dispirited, and told herself now that to refuse an honourable, good man who loved her, simply because he was not attractive, especially when marrying him would make it possible for her to change her mode of life, her cheerless, monotonous, idle life in which youth was passing with no prospect of anything better in the future—­to refuse him under such circumstances was madness, caprice and folly, and that God might even punish her for it.

The father went out.  When the sound of his steps had died away, she suddenly stood up before Laptev and said resolutely, turning horribly white as she did so: 

“I thought for a long time yesterday, Alexey Fyodorovitch. . . .  I accept your offer.”

He bent down and kissed her hand.  She kissed him awkwardly on the head with cold lips.

He felt that in this love scene the chief thing—­her love—­was lacking, and that there was a great deal that was not wanted; and he longed to cry out, to run away, to go back to Moscow at once.  But she was close to him, and she seemed to him so lovely, and he was suddenly overcome by passion.  He reflected that it was too late for deliberation now; he embraced her passionately, and muttered some words, calling her thou; he kissed her on the neck, and then on the cheek, on the head. . . .

She walked away to the window, dismayed by these demonstrations, and both of them were already regretting what they had said and both were asking themselves in confusion: