“My father was a simple workman,” he said, in a rough, jerky voice, “but I see no harm in that.”

Rashevitch was fearfully confused.  Dumbfoundered, as though he had been caught in the act of a crime, he gazed helplessly at Meier, and did not know what to say.  Genya and Iraida flushed crimson, and bent over their music; they were ashamed of their tactless father.  A minute passed in silence, and there was a feeling of unbearable discomfort, when all at once with a sort of painful stiffness and inappropriateness, there sounded in the air the words: 

“Yes, I am of the artisan class, and I am proud of it!”

Thereupon Meier, stumbling awkwardly among the furniture, took his leave, and walked rapidly into the hall, though his carriage was not yet at the door.

“You’ll have a dark drive to-night,” Rashevitch muttered, following him.  “The moon does not rise till late to-night.”

They stood together on the steps in the dark, and waited for the horses to be brought.  It was cool.

“There’s a falling star,” said Meier, wrapping himself in his overcoat.

“There are a great many in August.”

When the horses were at the door, Rashevitch gazed intently at the sky, and said with a sigh: 

“A phenomenon worthy of the pen of Flammarion. . . .”

After seeing his visitor off, he walked up and down the garden, gesticulating in the darkness, reluctant to believe that such a queer, stupid misunderstanding had only just occurred.  He was ashamed and vexed with himself.  In the first place it had been extremely incautious and tactless on his part to raise the damnable subject of blue blood, without finding out beforehand what his visitor’s position was.  Something of the same sort had happened to him before; he had, on one occasion in a railway carriage, begun abusing the Germans, and it had afterwards appeared that all the persons he had been conversing with were German.  In the second place he felt that Meier would never come and see him again.  These intellectuals who have risen from the people are morbidly sensitive, obstinate and slow to forgive.

“It’s bad, it’s bad,” muttered Rashevitch, spitting; he had a feeling of discomfort and loathing as though he had eaten soap.  “Ah, it’s bad!”

He could see from the garden, through the drawing-room window, Genya by the piano, very pale, and looking scared, with her hair down.  She was talking very, very rapidly. . . .  Iraida was walking up and down the room, lost in thought; but now she, too, began talking rapidly with her face full of indignation.  They were both talking at once.  Rashevitch could not hear a word, but he guessed what they were talking about.  Genya was probably complaining that her father drove away every decent person from the house with his talk, and to-day he had driven away from them their one acquaintance, perhaps a suitor, and now the poor young man would not have one place in the whole district where he could find rest for his soul.  And judging by the despairing way in which she threw up her arms, Iraida was talking probably on the subject of their dreary existence, their wasted youth. . . .