“Yes.  It is a pity you were not there.  There were heaps of guests—­about a thousand people, and all of them princes or generals, and there was music, and I danced—­But, Katenka” I broke off, “you are not listening to me?”

“Oh yes, I am listening.  You said that you danced—?”

“Why are you so serious?”

“Well, one cannot always be gay.”

“But you have changed tremendously since Woloda and I first went to Moscow.  Tell me the truth, now:  why are you so odd?” My tone was resolute.

“Am I so odd?” said Katenka with an animation which showed me that my question had interested her.  “I don’t see that I am so at all.”

“Well, you are not the same as you were before,” I continued.  “Once upon a time any one could see that you were our equal in everything, and that you loved us like relations, just as we did you; but now you are always serious, and keep yourself apart from us.”

“Oh, not at all.”

“But let me finish, please,” I interrupted, already conscious of a slight tickling in my nose—­the precursor of the tears which usually came to my eyes whenever I had to vent any long pent-up feeling.  “You avoid us, and talk to no one but Mimi, as though you had no wish for our further acquaintance.”

“But one cannot always remain the same—­one must change a little sometimes,” replied Katenka, who had an inveterate habit of pleading some such fatalistic necessity whenever she did not know what else to say.

I recollect that once, when having a quarrel with Lubotshka, who had called her “a stupid girl,” she (Katenka) retorted that everybody could not be wise, seeing that a certain number of stupid people was a necessity in the world.  However, on the present occasion, I was not satisfied that any such inevitable necessity for “changing sometimes” existed, and asked further: 

“Why is it necessary?”

“Well, you see, we may not always go on living together as we are doing now,” said Katenka, colouring slightly, and regarding Philip’s back with a grave expression on her face.  “My Mamma was able to live with your mother because she was her friend; but will a similar arrangement always suit the Countess, who, they say, is so easily offended?  Besides, in any case, we shall have to separate some day.  You are rich—­you have Petrovskoe, while we are poor—­Mamma has nothing.”

“You are rich,” “we are poor”—­both the words and the ideas which they connoted seemed to me extremely strange.  Hitherto, I had conceived that only beggars and peasants were poor and could not reconcile in my mind the idea of poverty and the graceful, charming Katenka.  I felt that Mimi and her daughter ought to live with us always and to share everything that we possessed.  Things ought never to be otherwise.  Yet, at this moment, a thousand new thoughts with regard to their lonely position came crowding into my head, and I felt so remorseful at the notion that we were rich and they poor, that I coloured up and could not look Katenka in the face.