You want her to go, but I want her to remain.
That's the only way to cure you of your nerves."

"Oh, very well, very well," said Zinaida Fyodorovna in alarm. "Let
us say no more about that. . . . Let us put it off till to-morrow
. . . . Now tell me about Moscow. . . . What is going on in Moscow?"

X

After lunch next day--it was the seventh of January, St. John the
Baptist's Day--Orlov put on his black dress coat and his decoration
to go to visit his father and congratulate him on his name day. He
had to go at two o'clock, and it was only half-past one when he had
finished dressing. What was he to do for that half-hour? He walked
about the drawing-room, declaiming some congratulatory verses which
he had recited as a child to his father and mother.

Zinaida Fyodorovna, who was just going out to a dressmaker's or to
the shops, was sitting, listening to him with a smile. I don't know
how their conversation began, but when I took Orlov his gloves, he
was standing before her with a capricious, beseeching face, saying:

"For God's sake, in the name of everything that's holy, don't talk
of things that everybody knows! What an unfortunate gift our
intellectual thoughtful ladies have for talking with enthusiasm and
an air of profundity of things that every schoolboy is sick to death
of! Ah, if only you would exclude from our conjugal programme all
these serious questions! How grateful I should be to you!"

"We women may not dare, it seems, to have views of our own."

"I give you full liberty to be as liberal as you like, and quote
from any authors you choose, but make me one concession: don't hold
forth in my presence on either of two subjects: the corruption of
the upper classes and the evils of the marriage system. Do understand
me, at last. The upper class is always abused in contrast with the
world of tradesmen, priests, workmen and peasants, Sidors and Nikitas
of all sorts. I detest both classes, but if I had honestly to choose
between the two, I should without hesitation, prefer the upper
class, and there would be no falsity or affectation about it, since
all my tastes are in that direction. Our world is trivial and empty,
but at any rate we speak French decently, read something, and don't
punch each other in the ribs even in our most violent quarrels,
while the Sidors and the Nikitas and their worships in trade talk
about 'being quite agreeable,' 'in a jiffy,' 'blast your eyes,' and
display the utmost license of p