“Kleopatra Alexyevna,” said Blagovo earnestly, pressing both hands to his heart, “what will happen to your father if you spend half an hour or so with your brother and me?”

He was frank, and knew how to communicate his liveliness to others.  After a moment’s thought, my sister laughed, and all at once became suddenly gay as she had been at the picnic.  We went out into the country, and lying in the grass went on with our talk, and looked towards the town where all the windows facing west were like glittering gold because the sun was setting.

After that, whenever my sister was coming to see me Blagovo turned up too, and they always greeted each other as though their meeting in my room was accidental.  My sister listened while the doctor and I argued, and at such times her expression was joyfully enthusiastic, full of tenderness and curiosity, and it seemed to me that a new world she had never dreamed of before, and which she was now striving to fathom, was gradually opening before her eyes.  When the doctor was not there she was quiet and sad, and now if she sometimes shed tears as she sat on my bed it was for reasons of which she did not speak.

In August Radish ordered us to be ready to go to the railway-line.  Two days before we were “banished” from the town my father came to see me.  He sat down and in a leisurely way, without looking at me, wiped his red face, then took out of his pocket our town Messenger, and deliberately, with emphasis on each word, read out the news that the son of the branch manager of the State Bank, a young man of my age, had been appointed head of a Department in the Exchequer.

“And now look at you,” he said, folding up the newspaper, “a beggar, in rags, good for nothing!  Even working-class people and peasants obtain education in order to become men, while you, a Poloznev, with ancestors of rank and distinction, aspire to the gutter!  But I have not come here to talk to you; I have washed my hands of you —­” he added in a stifled voice, getting up.  “I have come to find out where your sister is, you worthless fellow.  She left home after dinner, and here it is nearly eight and she is not back.  She has taken to going out frequently without telling me; she is less dutiful —­and I see in it your evil and degrading influence.  Where is she?”

In his hand he had the umbrella I knew so well, and I was already flustered and drew myself up like a schoolboy, expecting my father to begin hitting me with it, but he noticed my glance at the umbrella and most likely that restrained him.

“Live as you please!” he said.  “I shall not give you my blessing!”

“Holy Saints!” my nurse muttered behind the door.  “You poor, unlucky child!  Ah, my heart bodes ill!”