Vladimir Semyonitch had genuine faith in his literary vocation and his whole programme.  He had no doubts, and was evidently very well pleased with himself.  Only one thing grieved him—­the paper for which he worked had a limited circulation and was not very influential.  But Vladimir Semyonitch believed that sooner or later he would succeed in getting on to a solid magazine where he would have scope and could display himself—­and what little distress he felt on this score was pale beside the brilliance of his hopes.

Visiting this charming man, I made the acquaintance of his sister, Vera Semyonovna, a woman doctor.  At first sight, what struck me about this woman was her look of exhaustion and extreme ill-health.  She was young, with a good figure and regular, rather large features, but in comparison with her agile, elegant, and talkative brother she seemed angular, listless, slovenly, and sullen.  There was something strained, cold, apathetic in her movements, smiles, and words; she was not liked, and was thought proud and not very intelligent.

In reality, I fancy, she was resting.

“My dear friend,” her brother would often say to me, sighing and flinging back his hair in his picturesque literary way, “one must never judge by appearances!  Look at this book:  it has long ago been read.  It is warped, tattered, and lies in the dust uncared for; but open it, and it will make you weep and turn pale.  My sister is like that book.  Lift the cover and peep into her soul, and you will be horror-stricken.  Vera passed in some three months through experiences that would have been ample for a whole lifetime!”

Vladimir Semyonitch looked round him, took me by the sleeve, and began to whisper: 

“You know, after taking her degree she married, for love, an architect.  It’s a complete tragedy!  They had hardly been married a month when—­whew—­her husband died of typhus.  But that was not all.  She caught typhus from him, and when, on her recovery, she learnt that her Ivan was dead, she took a good dose of morphia.  If it had not been for vigorous measures taken by her friends, my Vera would have been by now in Paradise.  Tell me, isn’t it a tragedy?  And is not my sister like an ingenue, who has played already all the five acts of her life?  The audience may stay for the farce, but the ingenue must go home to rest.”

After three months of misery Vera Semyonovna had come to live with her brother.  She was not fitted for the practice of medicine, which exhausted her and did not satisfy her; she did not give one the impression of knowing her subject, and I never once heard her say anything referring to her medical studies.