When he got home Masha was in bed: she was breathing evenly and smiling, and was evidently sleeping with great enjoyment. Near her the white cat lay curled up, purring. While Nikitin lit the candle and lighted his cigarette, Masha woke up and greedily drank a glass of water.

‘I ate too many sweets,’ she said, and laughed. ‘Have you been home?’ she asked after a pause.

‘No.’

Nikitin knew already that Captain Polyansky, on whom Varya had been building great hopes of late, was being transferred to one of the western provinces, and was already making his farewell visits in the town, and so it was depressing at his father-in-law’s.

‘Varya looked in this evening,’ said Masha, sitting up. ‘She did not say anything, but one could see from her face how wretched she is, poor darling! I can’t bear Polyansky. He is fat and bloated, and when he walks or dances his cheeks shake. … He is not a man I would choose. But, still, I did think he was a decent person.’

‘I think he is a decent person now,’ said Nikitin.

‘Then why has he treated Varya so badly?’

‘Why badly?’ asked Nikitin, beginning to feel irritation against the white cat, who was stretching and arching its back. ‘As far as I know, he has made no proposal and has given her no promises.’

‘Then why was he so often at the house? If he didn’t mean to marry her, he oughtn’t to have come.’

Nikitin put out the candle and got into bed. But he felt disinclined to lie down and to sleep. He felt as though his head were immense and empty as a barn, and that new, peculiar thoughts were wandering about in it like tall shadows. He thought that, apart from the soft light of the ikon lamp, that beamed upon their quiet domestic happiness, that apart from this little world in which he and this cat lived so peacefully and happily, there was another world. … And he had a passionate, poignant longing to be in that other world, to work himself at some factory or big workshop, to address big audiences, to write, to publish, to raise a stir, to exhaust himself, to suffer. … He wanted something that would engross him till he forgot himself, ceased to care for the personal happiness which yielded him only sensations so monotonous. And suddenly there rose vividly before his imagination the figure of Shebaldin with his clean-shaven face, saying to him with horror: ‘You haven’t even read Lessing! You are quite behind the times! How you have gone to seed!’

Masha woke up and again drank some water. He glanced at her neck, at her plump shoulders and throat, and remembered the word the brigadier-general had used in church—‘rose’.

‘Rose,’ he muttered, and laughed.

His laugh was answered by a sleepy growl from Mushka under the bed: ‘Rrr … nga-nga-nga …!’

A heavy anger sank like a cold weight on his heart, and he felt tempted to say something rude to Masha, and even to jump up and hit her; his heart began throbbing.

‘So then,’ he asked, restraining himself, ‘since I went to your house, I was bound in duty to marry you?’

‘Of course. You know that very well.’

‘That’s nice.’ And a minute later he repeated: ‘That’s nice.’

To relieve the throbbing of his heart, and to avoid saying too much, Nikitin went to his study and lay down on the sofa, without a pillow; then he lay on the floor on the carpet.