person who had a real influence upon me at that time.  Seeing him, and reading the books he gave me, I began little by little to feel a thirst for the knowledge which would have given significance to my cheerless labour.  It seemed strange to me, for instance, that I had not known till then that the whole world was made up of sixty elements, I had not known what oil was, what paints were, and that I could have got on without knowing these things.  My acquaintance with the doctor elevated me morally too.  I was continually arguing with him and, though I usually remained of my own opinion, yet, thanks to him, I began to perceive that everything was not clear to me, and I began trying to work out as far as I could definite convictions in myself, that the dictates of conscience might be definite, and that there might be nothing vague in my mind.  Yet, though he was the most cultivated and best man in the town, he was nevertheless far from perfection.  In his manners, in his habit of turning every conversation into an argument, in his pleasant tenor, even in his friendliness, there was something coarse, like a divinity student, and when he took off his coat and sat in his silk shirt, or flung a tip to a waiter in the restaurant, I always fancied that culture might be all very well, but the Tatar was fermenting in him still.

At Epiphany he went back to Petersburg.  He went off in the morning, and after dinner my sister came in.  Without taking off her fur coat and her cap she sat down in silence, very pale, and kept her eyes fixed on the same spot.  She was chilled by the frost and one could see that she was upset by it.

“You must have caught cold,” I said.

Her eyes filled with tears; she got up and went out to Karpovna without saying a word to me, as though I had hurt her feelings.  And a little later I heard her saying, in a tone of bitter reproach: 

“Nurse, what have I been living for till now?  What?  Tell me, haven’t I wasted my youth?  All the best years of my life to know nothing but keeping accounts, pouring out tea, counting the halfpence, entertaining visitors, and thinking there was nothing better in the world!  Nurse, do understand, I have the cravings of a human being, and I want to live, and they have turned me into something like a housekeeper.  It’s horrible, horrible!”

She flung her keys towards the door, and they fell with a jingle into my room.  They were the keys of the sideboard, of the kitchen cupboard, of the cellar, and of the tea-caddy, the keys which my mother used to carry.

“Oh, merciful heavens!” cried the old woman in horror.  “Holy Saints above!”

Before going home my sister came into my room to pick up the keys, and said: 

“You must forgive me.  Something queer has happened to me lately.”

VIII

On returning home late one evening from Mariya Viktorovna’s I found waiting in my room a young police inspector in a new uniform; he was sitting at my table, looking through my books.