Iosifovna wrote to Dmitri Ionitch
that she was missing him very much, and begged him to come and see
them, and to relieve her sufferings; and, by the way, it was her
birthday. Below was a postscript: "I join in mother's request.--
K."

Startsev considered, and in the evening he went to the Turkins'.

"How do you do, if you please?" Ivan Petrovitch met him, smiling
with his eyes only. "Bongjour."

Vera Iosifovna, white-haired and looking much older, shook Startsev's
hand, sighed affectedly, and said:

"You don't care to pay attentions to me, doctor. You never come and
see us; I am too old for you. But now some one young has come;
perhaps she will be more fortunate."

And Kitten? She had grown thinner, paler, had grown handsomer and
more graceful; but now she was Ekaterina Ivanovna, not Kitten; she
had lost the freshness and look of childish naivete. And in her
expression and manners there was something new--guilty and
diffident, as though she did not feel herself at home here in the
Turkins' house.

"How many summers, how many winters!" she said, giving Startsev her
hand, and he could see that her heart was beating with excitement;
and looking at him intently and curiously, she went on: "How much
stouter you are! You look sunburnt and more manly, but on the whole
you have changed very little."

Now, too, he thought her attractive, very attractive, but there was
something lacking in her, or else something superfluous--he could
not himself have said exactly what it was, but something prevented
him from feeling as before. He did not like her pallor, her new
expression, her faint smile, her voice, and soon afterwards he
disliked her clothes, too, the low chair in which she was sitting;
he disliked something in the past when he had almost married her.
He thought of his love, of the dreams and the hopes which had
troubled him four years before--and he felt awkward.

They had tea with cakes. Then Vera Iosifovna read aloud a novel;
she read of things that never happen in real life, and Startsev
listened, looked at her handsome grey head, and waited for her to
finish.

"People are not stupid because they can't write novels, but because
they can't conceal it when they do," he thought.

"Not badsome," said Ivan Petrovitch.

Then Ekaterina Ivanovna played long and noisily on the piano, and
when she finished she was profusely thanked and warmly praised.

"It's a good thing I did not marry her," thought Startsev.

S