th the doctor raised me morally too. I used
to argue with him, and though I usually stuck to my opinion, yet,
through him, I came gradually to perceive that everything was not clear
to me, and I tried to cultivate convictions as definite as possible so
that the promptings of my conscience should be precise and have nothing
vague about them. Nevertheless, educated and fine as he was, far and
away the best man in the town, he was by no means perfect. There was
something rather rude and priggish in his ways and in his trick of
dragging talk down to discussion, and when he took off his coat and sat
in his shirt and gave the footman a tip, it always seemed to me that
culture was just a part of him, with the rest untamed Tartar.

After the holidays he left once more for Petersburg. He went in the
morning and after dinner my sister came to see me. Without taking off
her furs, she sat silent, very pale, staring in front of her. She began
to shiver and seemed to be fighting against some illness.

"You must have caught a cold," I said.

Her eyes filled with tears. She rose and went to Karpovna without a
word to me, as though I had offended her. And a little later I heard her
speaking in a tone of bitter reproach.

"Nurse, what have I been living for, up to now? What for? Tell me;
haven't I wasted my youth? During the last years I have had nothing but
making up accounts, pouring out tea, counting the copecks, entertaining
guests, without a thought that there was anything better in the world!
Nurse, try to understand me, I too have human desires and I want to live
and they have made a housekeeper of me. It is awful, awful!"

She flung her keys against the door and they fell with a clatter in my
room. They were the keys of the side-board, the larder, the cellar, and
the tea-chest--the keys my mother used to carry.

"Oh! Oh! Saints above!" cried my old nurse in terror. "The blessed
saints!"

When she left, my sister came into my room for her keys and said:

"Forgive me. Something strange has been going on in me lately."

VIII

One evening when I came home late from Maria Victorovna's I found a
young policeman in a new uniform in my room; he was sitting by the table
reading.

"At last!" he said getting up and stretching himself. "This is the third
time I have been to see you. The governor has ordered you to go and see
him to-morrow at nine o'clock sharp. Don't be late."

He made me give him a written promise to comply