was constrained as though she were uncertain whether
to address him formally or familiarly, to laugh or not, and that
she felt herself more a deacon's widow than his mother. And Katya
gazed without blinking at her uncle, his holiness, as though trying
to discover what sort of a person he was. Her hair sprang up from
under the comb and the velvet ribbon and stood out like a halo; she
had a turned-up nose and sly eyes. The child had broken a glass
before sitting down to dinner, and now her grandmother, as she
talked, moved away from Katya first a wineglass and then a tumbler.
The bishop listened to his mother and remembered how many, many
years ago she used to take him and his brothers and sisters to
relations whom she considered rich; in those days she was taken up
with the care of her children, now with her grandchildren, and she
had brought Katya. . . .

"Your sister, Varenka, has four children," she told him; "Katya,
here, is the eldest. And your brother-in-law Father Ivan fell sick,
God knows of what, and died three days before the Assumption; and
my poor Varenka is left a beggar."

"And how is Nikanor getting on?" the bishop asked about his eldest
brother.

"He is all right, thank God. Though he has nothing much, yet he can
live. Only there is one thing: his son, my grandson Nikolasha, did
not want to go into the Church; he has gone to the university to
be a doctor. He thinks it is better; but who knows! His Holy Will!"

"Nikolasha cuts up dead people," said Katya, spilling water over
her knees.

"Sit still, child," her grandmother observed calmly, and took the
glass out of her hand. "Say a prayer, and go on eating."

"How long it is since we have seen each other!" said the bishop,
and he tenderly stroked his mother's hand and shoulder; "and I
missed you abroad, mother, I missed you dreadfully."

"Thank you."

"I used to sit in the evenings at the open window, lonely and alone;
often there was music playing, and all at once I used to be overcome
with homesickness and felt as though I would give everything only
to be at home and see you."

His mother smiled, beamed, but at once she made a grave face and
said:

"Thank you."

His mood suddenly changed. He looked at his mother and could not
understand how she had come by that respectfulness, that timid
expression of face: what was it for? And he did not recognize her.
He felt sad and vexed. And then his head ached just as it had the
day before; his legs