me on imperceptibly, and life would reach its
end--and nothing more was wanted. He did not care, he wished for
nothing, and could reason about it coolly, but there was a sort of
heaviness in his face especially under his eyes, his forehead felt
drawn tight like elastic--and tears were almost starting into his
eyes. Feeling weak all over, he lay down on his bed, and in five
minutes was sound asleep.

III

The proposal Laptev had made so suddenly threw Yulia Sergeyevna
into despair.

She knew Laptev very little, had made his acquaintance by chance;
he was a rich man, a partner in the well-known Moscow firm of "Fyodor
Laptev and Sons"; always serious, apparently clever, and anxious
about his sister's illness. It had seemed to her that he took no
notice of her whatever, and she did not care about him in the least
--and then all of a sudden that declaration on the stairs, that
pitiful, ecstatic face. . . .

The offer had overwhelmed her by its suddenness and by the fact
that the word wife had been uttered, and by the necessity of rejecting
it. She could not remember what she had said to Laptev, but she
still felt traces of the sudden, unpleasant feeling with which she
had rejected him. He did not attract her; he looked like a shopman;
he was not interesting; she could not have answered him except with
a refusal, and yet she felt uncomfortable, as though she had done
wrong.

"My God! without waiting to get into the room, on the stairs," she
said to herself in despair, addressing the ikon which hung over her
pillow; "and no courting beforehand, but so strangely, so
oddly. . . ."

In her solitude her agitation grew more intense every hour, and it
was beyond her strength to master this oppressive feeling alone.
She needed some one to listen to her story and to tell her that she
had done right. But she had no one to talk to. She had lost her
mother long before; she thought her father a queer man, and could
not talk to him seriously. He worried her with his whims, his extreme
readiness to take offence, and his meaningless gestures; and as
soon as one began to talk to him, he promptly turned the conversation
on himself. And in her prayer she was not perfectly open, because
she did not know for certain what she ought to pray for.

The samovar was brought in. Yulia Sergeyevna, very pale and tired,
looking dejected, came into the dining-room to make tea--it was
one of her duties--and poured out a glass for her father. Serge