Towards evening Kvashin arrived.  Before leaving town he had gone to his flat and had learned from the porter that his wife had come in his absence.

“Here I am,” he said gaily, coming into his mother-in-law’s room and pretending not to notice their stern and tear-stained faces.  “Here I am!  It’s five days since we have seen each other!”

He rapidly kissed his wife’s hand and his mother-in-law’s, and with the air of man delighted at having finished a difficult task, he lolled in an arm-chair.

“Ough!” he said, puffing out all the air from his lungs.  “Here I have been worried to death.  I have scarcely sat down.  For almost five days now I have been, as it were, bivouacking.  I haven’t been to the flat once, would you believe it?  I have been busy the whole time with the meeting of Shipunov’s and Ivantchikov’s creditors; I had to work in Galdeyev’s office at the shop. . . .  I’ve had nothing to eat or to drink, and slept on a bench, I was chilled through . . . .  I hadn’t a free minute.  I hadn’t even time to go to the flat.  That’s how I came not to be at home, Nadyusha, . .  And Kvashin, holding his sides as though his back were aching, glanced stealthily at his wife and mother-in-law to see the effect of his lie, or as he called it, diplomacy.  The mother-in-law and wife were looking at each other in joyful astonishment, as though beyond all hope and expectation they had found something precious, which they had lost. . . .  Their faces beamed, their eyes glowed. . . .

“My dear man,” cried the old lady, jumping up, “why am I sitting here?  Tea!  Tea at once!  Perhaps you are hungry?”

“Of course he is hungry,” cried his wife, pulling off her head a bandage soaked in vinegar.  “Mamma, bring the wine, and the savouries.  Natalya, lay the table!  Oh, my goodness, nothing is ready!”

And both of them, frightened, happy, and bustling, ran about the room.  The old lady could not look without laughing at her daughter who had slandered an innocent man, and the daughter felt ashamed. . . .

The table was soon laid.  Kvashin, who smelt of madeira and liqueurs and who could scarcely breathe from repletion, complained of being hungry, forced himself to munch and kept on talking of the meeting of Shipunov’s and Ivantchikov’s creditors, while his wife and mother-in-law could not take their eyes off his face, and both thought: 

“How clever and kind he is!  How handsome!”

“All serene,” thought Kvashin, as he lay down on the well-filled feather bed.  “Though they are regular tradesmen’s wives, though they are Philistines, yet they have a charm of their own, and one can spend a day or two of the week here with enjoyment. . . .”

He wrapped himself up, got warm, and as he dozed off, he said to himself: 

“All serene!”

A GENTLEMAN FRIEND

THE charming Vanda, or, as she was described in her passport, the “Honourable Citizen Nastasya Kanavkin,” found herself, on leaving the hospital, in a position she had never been in before:  without a home to go to or a farthing in her pocket.  What was she to do?