“No? do go; there are going to be some new things....  That interested you so.  I should certainly go.”

“Well, anyway, I shall come home before dinner,” he said, looking at his watch.

“Put on your frock coat, so that you can go straight to call on Countess Bola.”

“But is it absolutely necessary?”

“Oh, absolutely!  He has been to see us.  Come, what is it?  You go in, sit down, talk for five minutes of the weather, get up and go away.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t believe it!  I’ve got so out of the way of all this that it makes me feel positively ashamed.  It’s such a horrible thing to do!  A complete outsider walks in, sits down, stays on with nothing to do, wastes their time and worries himself, and walks away!”

Kitty laughed.

“Why, I suppose you used to pay calls before you were married, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did, but I always felt ashamed, and now I’m so out of the way of it that, by Jove!  I’d sooner go two days running without my dinner than pay this call!  One’s so ashamed!  I feel all the while that they’re annoyed, that they’re saying, ’What has he come for?’”

“No, they won’t.  I’ll answer for that,” said Kitty, looking into his face with a laugh.  She took his hand.  “Well, good-bye....  Do go, please.”

He was just going out after kissing his wife’s hand, when she stopped him.

“Kostya, do you know I’ve only fifty roubles left?”

“Oh, all right, I’ll go to the bank and get some.  How much?” he said, with the expression of dissatisfaction she knew so well.

“No, wait a minute.”  She held his hand.  “Let’s talk about it, it worries me.  I seem to spend nothing unnecessary, but money seems to fly away simply.  We don’t manage well, somehow.”

“Oh, it’s all right,” he said with a little cough, looking at her from under his brows.

That cough she knew well.  It was a sign of intense dissatisfaction, not with her, but with himself.  He certainly was displeased not at so much money being spent, but at being reminded of what he, knowing something was unsatisfactory, wanted to forget.

“I have told Sokolov to sell the wheat, and to borrow an advance on the mill.  We shall have money enough in any case.”

“Yes, but I’m afraid that altogether...”

“Oh, it’s all right, all right,” he repeated.  “Well, good-bye, darling.”

“No, I’m really sorry sometimes that I listened to mamma.  How nice it would have been in the country!  As it is, I’m worrying you all, and we’re wasting our money.”

“Not at all, not at all.  Not once since I’ve been married have I said that things could have been better than they are....”

“Truly?” she said, looking into his eyes.

He had said it without thinking, simply to console her.  But when he glanced at her and saw those sweet truthful eyes fastened questioningly on him, he repeated it with his whole heart.  “I was positively forgetting her,” he thought.  And he remembered what was before them, so soon to come.