er seemed to
her so novel, so cultured, and so interesting as the year before.
"Dear Sasha, you are very, very ill . . . I would do anything to
make you not so pale and thin. I am so indebted to you! You can't
imagine how much you have done for me, my good Sasha! In reality
you are now the person nearest and dearest to me."

They sat on and talked, and now, after Nadya had spent a winter in
Petersburg, Sasha, his works, his smile, his whole figure had for
her a suggestion of something out of date, old-fashioned, done with
long ago and perhaps already dead and buried.

"I am going down the Volga the day after tomorrow," said Sasha,
"and then to drink koumiss. I mean to drink koumiss. A friend and
his wife are going with me. His wife is a wonderful woman; I am
always at her, trying to persuade her to go to the university. I
want her to turn her life upside down."

After having talked they drove to the station. Sasha got her tea
and apples; and when the train began moving and he waved his
handkerchief at her, smiling, it could be seen even from his legs
that he was very ill and would not live long.

Nadya reached her native town at midday. As she drove home from the
station the streets struck her as very wide and the houses very
small and squat; there were no people about, she met no one but the
German piano-tuner in a rusty greatcoat. And all the houses looked
as though they were covered with dust. Granny, who seemed to have
grown quite old, but was as fat and plain as ever, flung her arms
round Nadya and cried for a long time with her face on Nadya's
shoulder, unable to tear herself away. Nina Ivanovna looked much
older and plainer and seemed shrivelled up, but was still tightly
laced, and still had diamonds flashing on her fingers.

"My darling," she said, trembling all over, "my darling!"

Then they sat down and cried without speaking. It was evident that
both mother and grandmother realized that the past was lost and
gone, never to return; they had now no position in society, no
prestige as before, no right to invite visitors; so it is when in
the midst of an easy careless life the police suddenly burst in at
night and made a search, and it turns out that the head of the
family has embezzled money or committed forgery--and goodbye then
to the easy careless life for ever!

Nadya went upstairs and saw the same bed, the same windows with
naive white curtains, and outside the windows the same garden, gay
and noi