name called out in such a loud and cheerful voice that he could not help looking round. At the corner of the pavement, in a short, stylish overcoat and a low-crowned fashionable hat, jauntily askew, with a smile that showed a gleam of white teeth and red lips, stood Stepan Arkadyevich, radiant, young, and beaming. He called him vigorously and urgently, and insisted on his stopping. He had one arm on the window of a carriage that was stopping at the corner, and out of the window were thrust the heads of a lady in a velvet hat, and two children. Stepan Arkadyevich was smiling and beckoning to his brother- in-law. The lady smiled a kindly smile too, and she too waved her hand to Alexei Alexandrovich. It was Dolly with her children.

Alexei Alexandrovich did not want to see anyone in Moscow, and least of all his wife's brother. He raised his hat and would have driven on, but Stepan Arkadyevich told his coachman to stop, and ran across the snow to him.

`Well, what a shame not to have let us know! Been here long? I was at Dussot's yesterday and saw ``Karenin' on the visitors' list, but it never entered my head that it was you,' said Stepan Arkadyevich, sticking his head in at the window of the carriage, `or I should have looked you up. I am glad to see you!' he said, knocking one foot against the other to shake the snow off. `What a shame you did not let us know!' he repeated.

`I had no time; I am very busy,' Alexei Alexandrovich responded dryly.

`Come to my wife - she does so want to see you.'

Alexei Alexandrovich unfolded the rug in which his frozen feet were wrapped, and getting out of his carriage made his way over the snow to Darya Alexandrovna.

`Why, Alexei Alexandrovich, what are you cutting us like this for?' said Dolly smiling.

`I was very busy. Delighted to see you!' he said in a tone clearly indicating that he was annoyed by it. `How are you?'

`Tell me, how is my darling Anna?'

Alexei Alexandrovich mumbled something and would have gone on. But Stepan Arkadyevich stopped him.

`I tell you what we'll do tomorrow. Dolly, ask him to dinner. We'll ask Koznishev and Pestsov, so as to entertain him with our Moscow intellectuals.'

`Yes, please, do come,' said Dolly; `we will expect you at five - or six o'clock, if you like. How is my darling Anna? How long...'

`She is quite well,' Alexei Alexandrovich mumbled, frowning. `Delighted!' and he moved away toward his carriage.

`You will come?' Dolly called after him.

Alexei Alexandrovich said something which Dolly could not catch in the noise of the moving carriages.

`I shall come round tomorrow!' Stepan Arkadyevich shouted to him.

Alexei Alexandrovich got into his carriage, and buried himself in it so as neither to see nor to be seen.

`Queer fish!' said Stepan Arkadyevich to his wife, and, glancing at his watch, he made a motion of his hand before his face, indicating a caress to his wife and children, and walked jauntily along the pavement.