hair. Fyodor jumped up, and
with heavy, measured steps went up to his wife. His face was pale, grey,
and quivering. He brought his fist down on the table with a bang, and
said in a hollow voice:

"I won't allow it!"

At the same moment Pobyedimsky jumped up from his chair. He, too, pale
and angry, went up to Tatyana Ivanovna, and he, too, struck the table
with his fist.

"I... I won't allow it!" he said.

"What, what's the matter?" asked my uncle in surprise.

"I won't allow it!" repeated Fyodor, banging on the table.

My uncle jumped up and blinked nervously. He tried to speak, but in his
amazement and alarm could not utter a word; with an embarrassed smile,
he shuffled out of the lodge with the hurried step of an old man,
leaving his hat behind. When, a little later, my mother ran into the
lodge, Fyodor and Pobyedimsky were still hammering on the table like
blacksmiths and repeating, "I won't allow it!"

"What has happened here?" asked mother. "Why has my brother been taken
ill? What's the matter?"

Looking at Tatyana's pale, frightened face and at her infuriated
husband, mother probably guessed what was the matter. She sighed and
shook her head.

"Come! give over banging on the table!" she said. "Leave off, Fyodor!
And why are you thumping, Yegor Alexyevitch? What have you got to do
with it?"

Pobyedimsky was startled and confused. Fyodor looked intently at him,
then at his wife, and began walking about the room. When mother had
gone out of the lodge, I saw what for long afterwards I looked upon as
a dream. I saw Fyodor seize my tutor, lift him up in the air, and thrust
him out of the door.

When I woke up in the morning my tutor's bed was empty. To my question
where he was nurse told me in a whisper that he had been taken off early
in the morning to the hospital, as his arm was broken. Distressed at
this intelligence and remembering the scene of the previous evening,
I went out of doors. It was a grey day. The sky was covered with
storm-clouds and there was a wind blowing dust, bits of paper, and
feathers along the ground.... It felt as though rain were coming. There
was a look of boredom in the servants and in the animals. When I went
into the house I was told not to make such a noise with my feet, as
mother was ill and in bed with a migraine. What was I to do? I went
outside the gate, sat down on the little bench there, and fell to trying
to discover the meaning of what I had seen and heard the day