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204, considering all their mutual respect and warmth of friendship. Viéra Pavlovna also tried hard to recollect whether she could have offended him in any manner, and she, too, could think of nothing out of the way; for she knew, just as her husband did, that it was impossible, as far as she was concerned.

Two days more passed; for Kirsánof not to call at the Lopukhófs' for four days was a most unusual circumstance. Viéra Pavlovna even wondered "could he be well?" Lopukhóf went round to see if he were really ill. "How? ill?" He is still angry. Lopukhóf questioned him persistently. After repeated negations, he began to get off some disjointed nonsense about his relations with Lopukhóf and Viéra Pavlovna; that he loves and respects them very highly; but after all that had happened, they were not attentive enough to him. But in what respect—and this was worst of all—there was not the slightest hint in his bombastic talk. It was clear that the gentleman was eaten up by ambition. All this was so savage to witness in such a man as Lopukhóf considered Kirsánof to be, and so the visitor said to his host:—

"Now, listen; we have been friends; and the time will come when you will be ashamed of this."

Kirsánof, with affected humility, replied that, in fact, it must on his side be a mere trifle; but what can be done, supposing he has been offended by many things?

"Nu, what was it then?"

He began to bring up a good many occasions at which he had taken offence lately, all in such a style as this: "You said that the lighter the hair of a person, the nearer he is to dulness; Viéra Pavlovna said that tea was getting dearer. The one was a hit at the color of my hair; the other was a hint that I was eating you out of house and home."

Lopukhóf's hands fell to his side. This man has gone crazy with his ambition; or, properly speaking, he has become a fool and a good-for-nothing!

Lopukhóf returned home in a gloomy frame of mind; it was bitter for him to see such a warp in a man of whom he was so fond. To Viéra Pavlovna's questions as to what he had learned, he answered gloomily that it would be better not to speak about it; that Kirsánof had spoken disagreeable nonsense, and that he was probably sick.

In three or four days Kirsánof, who had in all probability