“How are things at home?” she asked rapidly, and her pale face quivered.  “How is mother?”

“You know mother . . .” said Pyotr Mihalitch, not looking at her.

“Petrusha, you’ve thought a great deal about what has happened,” she said, taking hold of her brother’s sleeve, and he knew how hard it was for her to speak.  “You’ve thought a great deal:  tell me, can we reckon on mother’s accepting Grigory . . . and the whole position, one day?”

She stood close to her brother, face to face with him, and he was astonished that she was so beautiful, and that he seemed not to have noticed it before.  And it seemed to him utterly absurd that his sister, so like his mother, pampered, elegant, should be living with Vlassitch and in Vlassitch’s house, with the petrified servant, and the table with six legs—­in the house where a man had been flogged to death, and that she was not going home with him, but was staying here to sleep.

“You know mother,” he said, not answering her question.  “I think you ought to have . . . to do something, to ask her forgiveness or something. . . .”

“But to ask her forgiveness would mean pretending we had done wrong.  I’m ready to tell a lie to comfort mother, but it won’t lead anywhere.  I know mother.  Well, what will be, must be!” said Zina, growing more cheerful now that the most unpleasant had been said.  “We’ll wait for five years, ten years, and be patient, and then God’s will be done.”

She took her brother’s arm, and when she walked through the dark hall she squeezed close to him.  They went out on the steps.  Pyotr Mihalitch said good-bye, got on his horse, and set off at a walk; Zina and Vlassitch walked a little way with him.  It was still and warm, with a delicious smell of hay; stars were twinkling brightly between the clouds.  Vlassitch’s old garden, which had seen so many gloomy stories in its time, lay slumbering in the darkness, and for some reason it was mournful riding through it.

“Zina and I to-day after dinner spent some really exalted moments,” said Vlassitch.  “I read aloud to her an excellent article on the question of emigration.  You must read it, brother!  You really must.  It’s remarkable for its lofty tone.  I could not resist writing a letter to the editor to be forwarded to the author.  I wrote only a single line:  ‘I thank you and warmly press your noble hand.’”

Pyotr Mihalitch was tempted to say, “Don’t meddle in what does not concern you,” but he held his tongue.

Vlassitch walked by his right stirrup and Zina by the left; both seemed to have forgotten that they had to go home.  It was damp, and they had almost reached Koltovitch’s copse.  Pyotr Mihalitch felt that they were expecting something from him, though they hardly knew what it was, and he felt unbearably sorry for them.  Now as they walked by the horse with submissive faces, lost in thought, he had a deep conviction that they were unhappy, and could not be happy, and their love seemed to him a melancholy, irreparable mistake.  Pity and the sense that he could do nothing to help them reduced him to that state of spiritual softening when he was ready to make any sacrifice to get rid of the painful feeling of sympathy.