ed.

"Last night I was reading a story in which there is an old man and
his daughter. The old man is in some office and his chief falls in
love with his daughter. I have not finished it, but there was a
passage which made it hard to keep from tears," said Nina Ivanovna
and she sipped at her glass. "I thought of it this morning and shed
tears again."

"I have been so depressed all these days," said Nadya after a pause.
"Why is it I don't sleep at night!"

"I don't know, dear. When I can't sleep I shut my eyes very tightly,
like this, and picture to myself Anna Karenin moving about and
talking, or something historical from the ancient world. . . ."

Nadya felt that her mother did not understand her and was incapable
of understanding. She felt this for the first time in her life, and
it positively frightened her and made her want to hide herself; and
she went away to her own room.

At two o'clock they sat down to dinner. It was Wednesday, a fast
day, and so vegetable soup and bream with boiled grain were set
before Granny.

To tease Granny Sasha ate his meat soup as well as the vegetable
soup. He was making jokes all through dinner-time, but his jests
were laboured and invariably with a moral bearing, and the effect
was not at all amusing when before making some witty remark he
raised his very long, thin, deathly-looking fingers; and when one
remembered that he was very ill and would probably not be much
longer in this world, one felt sorry for him and ready to weep.

After dinner Granny went off to her own room to lie down. Nina
Ivanovna played on the piano for a little, and then she too went
away.

"Oh, dear Nadya!" Sasha began his usual afternoon conversation, "if
only you would listen to me! If only you would!"

She was sitting far back in an old-fashioned armchair, with her
eyes shut, while he paced slowly about the room from corner to
corner.

"If only you would go to the university," he said. "Only enlightened
and holy people are interesting, it's only they who are wanted. The
more of such people there are, the sooner the Kingdom of God will
come on earth. Of your town then not one stone will be left,
everything will he blown up from the foundations, everything will
be changed as though by magic. And then there will be immense,
magnificent houses here, wonderful gardens, marvellous fountains,
remarkable people. . . . But that's not what matters most. What
matters most is that the crowd, in our sense o