Quite the contrary even: Varvara Ardalionovna got married after solidly convincing herself that her future husband was a modest, agreeable man, almost educated, who would never commit any great meanness. Varvara Ardalionovna did not look into small meannesses, as too trifling; and where are there not such trifles? No one's looking for ideals! Besides, she knew that by marrying, she was providing a corner for her mother, her father, her brothers. Seeing her brother in misfortune, she wanted to help him, in spite of all previous family misunderstandings. Ptitsyn sometimes urged Ganya—in a friendly way, naturally—to find a job. "You despise generals and generalship," he sometimes said to him jokingly, "but look, all of 'them' will end up as generals in their turn; if you live long enough, you'll see it." "What made them decide that I despise generals and generalship?" Ganya thought to himself sarcastically. To help her brother, Varvara Ardalionovna decided to widen the circle of her activities; she wormed her way in with the Epanchins, childhood memories contributing much to that end: both she and her brother had played with the Epanchin girls in childhood. We shall note here that if, in her visits to the Epanchins, Varvara Ardalionovna had been pursuing some extraordinary dream, she might at once have left the category of people in which she had confined herself; but she was not pursuing a dream; there was even a rather well-founded calculation here on her part: it was founded on the character of this family. Aglaya's character she studied tirelessly. She had set herself the task of turning the two of them, her brother and Aglaya, to each other again. It may be that she actually achieved something; it may be that she fell into error, in counting too much on her brother, for instance, and expecting something from him that he could never and in no way give. In any case, she acted rather skillfully at the Epanchins': for weeks at a time she made no mention of her brother, was always extremely truthful and candid, bore herself simply but with dignity. As for the depths of her conscience, she was not afraid of looking there and did not reproach herself for anything at all. It was this that gave her strength. There was only one thing that she sometimes noticed in herself—that she, too, was perhaps angry, that in her, too, there was a great deal of self-love and even all but pinched vanity; she noticed it especially at certain moments, almost every time she left the Epanchins'.

And now she was returning from them and, as we have already said, in rueful pensiveness. Something bitterly mocking could also

be glimpsed in this ruefulness. Ptitsyn lived in Pavlovsk in an unattractive but roomy wooden house that stood on a dusty street and which would soon come into his full possession, so that he in turn was already beginning to sell it to someone. Going up to the porch, Varvara Ardalionovna heard an extremely loud noise upstairs and could make out the voices of her brother and father shouting. Going into the drawing room and seeing Ganya, who was running up and down the room, pale with fury and almost tearing his hair out, she winced and, with a weary air, lowered herself onto the sofa without taking off her hat. Knowing very well that if she kept silent for another minute and did not ask her brother why he was running like that, he would unfailingly become angry, Varya hastened, finally, to say, in the guise of a question:

"Same as ever?"

"As ever, hah!" exclaimed Ganya. "As ever! No, the devil knows what's going on here now, and not as ever! The old man's getting rabid . . . mother's howling ... By God, Varya, say what you will, I'll throw him out of the house or ... or leave myself," he added, probably recalling that he really could not throw people out of a house that was not his.

"You must be tolerant," Varya murmured.

"Tolerant of what? Of whom?" Ganya flared up. "Of his abominations? No, say what you will, it's impossible like this! Impossible, impossible, impossible! And such a manner: he's to blame and yet he swaggers even more! 'If it won't fit through the gate, knock the fence down! . . .' Why are you sitting there like that? You don't look yourself!"

"I look as I look," Varya answered with displeasure.

Ganya studied her more intently.

"You've been there?" he asked suddenly.

"Yes."

"Wait, they're shouting again! What a shame, and at such a time!"

"Why such a time? It's no special time."

Ganya looked still more intently at his sister.

"Did you find out anything?" he asked.

"Nothing unexpected, at least. I found out that it's all true. My husband was more right than either of us; he predicted it from the very beginning, and so it's turned out. Where is he?" "Not at home. What's turned out?"

"The prince is formally her fiancé, the matter's settled. The older

girls told me. Aglaya has agreed; they've even stopped hiding it. (It was all so mysterious there till now.) Adelaida's wedding will be postponed again, so as to celebrate both weddings together, on the same day—how poetic! Like verse! Why don't you go and write some verses for the nuptials instead of running up and down the room for nothing? Tonight they'll be having old Belokonsky; she arrived just in time; there will be guests. He'll be introduced to Belokonsky, though he's already met her; it seems they're going to announce it publicly. They're only afraid he'll drop and break something as he comes into the room in front of the guests, or just fall down himself; that would be like him."

Ganya listened very attentively, but, to his sister's surprise, this striking news did not seem to make any striking effect on him.

"Well, that was clear," he said after some thought, "so, it's over!" he added with a strange smile, peeking slyly into his sister's face and still pacing up and down the room, but much more slowly now.

"It's good that you can take it philosophically; I'm truly glad," said Varya.

"It's off our backs; off yours, at least."

"I believe I served you sincerely, without arguing and pestering; I never asked you what sort of happiness you wanted to look for with Aglaya."

"But was I . . . looking for happiness with Aglaya?"

"Well, kindly don't go getting into philosophy! Of course you were. It's over, and enough for us—two fools. I must confess to you, I never could look seriously on this affair; I took it up 'just in case,' counting on her funny character, and above all to humor you; there was a ninety percent chance it would be a flop. Even now I don't know myself what you were after."

"Now you and your husband will start urging me to get a job; give me lectures on persistence and willpower, on not scorning small things, and so on—I know it by heart," Ganya laughed loudly.

"There's something new on his mind!" thought Varya.

"So, what—are they glad there, the parents?" Ganya asked suddenly.

"N-no, it seems not. However, you can judge for yourself; Ivan Fyodorovich is pleased; the mother's afraid; before, too, she loathed seeing him as a suitor; you know why."

"That's not what I mean; the suitor is impossible and

unthinkable, that's clear. I'm asking about now, how are things there now? Has she formally accepted him?"

"She hasn't said 'no' yet—that's all, but then it couldn't be otherwise with her. You know how preposterously shy and modest she's been all along: as a child she used to get into the wardrobe and sit there for two or three hours, only so as not to come out to the guests; she's grown into such a big thing, but it's the same now. You know, for some reason I think there's actually something serious in it, even on her part. They say she keeps laughing her head off at the prince, from morning till night, so as not to let anything show, but she must certainly manage to say something to him on the quiet every day, because he looks as though he's walking on air, beaming . . . They say he's terribly funny. I heard it from them. It also seemed to me that they were laughing in my face—the older ones, I mean."