Chapter XXVIII

A letter sent by Sarudine to Lida on the day following their interview fell by chance into Maria Ivanovna's hands. It contained a request for the permission to see her, and awkwardly suggested that sundry matters might be satisfactorily arranged. Its pages cast, so Maria Ivanovna thought, an ugly, shameful shadow upon the pure image of her daughter. In her first perplexity and distress, she remembered her own youth with its love, its deceptions, and the grievous episodes of her married life. A long chain of suffering forged by a life based on rigid laws of morality dragged its slow length along, even to the confines of old age. It was like a grey band, marred in places by monotonous days of care and disappointment.

Yet the thought that her daughter had broken through the solid wall surrounding this grey, dusty life, and had plunged into the lurid whirlpool where joy and sorrow and death were mingled, filled the old woman with horror and rage.

"Vile, wicked girl!" she thought, as despairingly she let her hands fall into her lap. Suddenly it consoled her to imagine that possibly things had not gone too far, and her face assumed a dull, almost a cunning expression. She read and re-read the letter, yet could gather nothing from its frigid, affected style.

Feeling how helpless she was, the old woman wept bitterly; and then, having set her cap straight, she asked the maid-servant:

"Dounika, is Vladimir Petrovitch at home?"

"What?" shouted Dounika.

"Fool! I asked if the young gentleman was at home."

"He's just gone into the study. He's writing a letter!" replied Dounika, looking radiant, as if this letter were the reason for unusual rejoicing.

Maria Ivanovna looked hard at the girl, and an evil light flashed from her faded eyes.

"Toad! if you dare to fetch and carry letters again, I'll give you a lesson that you'll never forget."

Sanine was seated at the table, writing. His mother was so little used to seeing him write, that, in spite of her grief, she was interested.

"What's that you're writing?"

"A letter," replied Sanine, looking up, gaily.

"To whom?"

"Oh! to a journalist I know. I think of joining the staff of his paper."

"So you write for the papers?"

Sanine smiled. "I do everything."

"But why do you want to go there?"

"Because I'm tired of living here with you, mother," said Sanine frankly.

Maria Ivanovna felt somewhat hurt.

"Thank you," she said.

Sanine looked attentively at her, and felt inclined to tell her not to be so silly as to imagine that a man, especially one who had no employment, could care to remain always in the same place. But it irked him to have to say