'How do you do, if you please?' Ivan Petrovitch met him, smiling with his eyes only. 'Bongjour.'
Vera Iosifovna, white-haired and looking much older, shook Startsev's hand, sighed affectedly, and said:
'You don't care to pay attentions to me, doctor. You never come and see us; I am too old for you. But now some one young has come; perhaps she will be more fortunate.'
And Kitten? She had grown thinner, paler, had grown handsomer and more graceful; but now she was Ekaterina Ivanovna, not Kitten; she had lost the freshness and look of childish naivete. And in her expression and manners there was something new -- guilty and diffident, as though she did not feel herself at home here in the Turkins' house.
'How many summers, how many winters!' she said, giving Startsev her hand, and he could see that her heart was beating with excitement; and looking at him intently and curiously, she went on: 'How much stouter you are! You look sunburnt and more manly, but on the whole you have changed very little.'
Now, too, he thought her attractive, very attractive, but there was something lacking in her, or else something superfluous -- he could not himself have said exactly what it was, but something prevented him from feeling as before. He did not like her pallor, her new expression, her faint smile, her voice, and soon afterwards he disliked her clothes, too, the low chair in which she was sitting; he disliked something in the past when he had almost married her. He thought of his love, of the dreams and the hopes which had troubled him four years before -- and he felt awkward.
They had tea with cakes. Then Vera Iosifovna read aloud a novel; she read of things that never happen in real life, and Startsev listened, looked at her handsome grey head, and waited for her to finish.
People are not stupid because they can't write novels, but because they can't conceal it when they do,' he thought.
'Not badsome,' said Ivan Petrovitch.
Then Ekaterina Ivanovna played long and noisily on the piano, and when she finished she was profusely thanked and warmly praised.
'It's a good thing I did not marry her,' thought Startsev.
She looked at him, and evidently expected him to ask her to go into the garden, but he remained silent.
'Let us have a talk,' she said, going up to him. 'How are you getting on? What are you doing? How are things? I have been thinking about you all these days,' she went on nervously. 'I wanted to write to you, wanted to come myself to see you at Dyalizh. I quite made up my mind to go, but afterwards I thought better of it. God knows what your attitude is towards me now; I have been looking forward to seeing you to-day with such emotion. For goodness' sake let us go into the garden.'
They went into the garden and sat down on the seat under the old maple, just as they had done four years before. It was dark.
'How are you getting on?' asked Ekaterina Ivanovna.
'Oh, all right; I am jogging along,' answered Startsev.
And he could think of nothing more. They were silent.
'I feel so excited!' said Ekaterina Ivanovna, and she hid her face in her hands. 'But don't pay attention to it. I am so happy to be at home; I am so glad to see every one. I can't get used to it. So many memories! I thought we should talk without stopping till morning.'
Now he saw her face near, her shining eyes, and in the darkness she looked younger than in the room, and even her old childish expression seemed to have come back to her. And indeed she was looking at him with naive curiosity, as though she wanted to get a closer view and understanding of the man who had loved her so ardently, with such tenderness, and so unsuccessfully; her eyes thanked him for that love. And he remembered all that had been, every minute detail; how he had wandered about the cemetery, how he had returned home in the morning exhausted, and he suddenly felt sad and regretted the past. A warmth began glowing in his heart.
'Do you remember how I took you to the dance at the club?' he asked. 'It was dark and rainy then. . .'
The warmth was glowing now in his heart, and he longed to talk, to rail at life. . . .
'Ech!' he said with a sigh. 'You ask how I am living. How do we live here? Why, not at all. We grow old, we grow stout, we grow slack. Day after day passes; life slips by without colour, without expressions, without thoughts. . . . In the daytime working for gain, and in the evening the club, the company of card-players, alcoholic, raucous-voiced gentlemen whom I can't endure. What is there nice in it?'
'Well, you have work -- a noble object in life. You used to be so fond of talking of your hospital. I was such a queer girl then; I imagined myself such a great pianist. Nowadays all young ladies play the piano, and I played, too, like everybody else, and there was nothing special about me. I am just such a pianist as my mother is an authoress. And of course I didn't understand you then, but afterwards in Moscow I often thought of you. I thought of no one but you. What happiness to be a district doctor; to help the suffering; to be serving the people! What happiness!' Ekaterina Ivanovna repeated with enthusiasm. 'When I thought of you in Moscow, you seemed to me so ideal, so lofty. . . .'
Startsev thought of the notes he used to take out of his pockets in the evening with such pleasure, and the glow in his heart was quenched.
He got up to go into the house. She took his arm.
'You are the best man I've known in my life,' she went on. 'We will see each other and talk, won't we? Promise me. I am not a pianist; I am not in error about myself now, and I will not play before you or talk of music.'
When they had gone into the house, and when Startsev saw in the lamplight her face, and her sad, grateful, searching eyes fixed upon him, he felt uneasy and thought again:
'It's a good thing I did not marry her then.'
He began taking leave.
'You have no human right to go before supper,' said Ivan Petrovitch as he saw him off. 'It's extremely perpendicular on your part. Well, now, perform!' he added, addressing Pava in the hall.
