I felt deeply sorry to see her grief at our meeting, even though I knew that in ourselves we represented nothing in her eyes, but were dear to her only as reminders of our mother—­that every kiss which she imprinted upon my cheeks expressed the one thought, “She is no more—­she is dead, and I shall never see her again.”

Papa, who took little notice of us here in Moscow, and whose face was perpetually preoccupied on the rare occasions when he came in his black dress-coat to take formal dinner with us, lost much in my eyes at this period, in spite of his turned-up ruffles, robes de chambre, overseers, bailiffs, expeditions to the estate, and hunting exploits.

Karl Ivanitch—­whom Grandmamma always called “Uncle,” and who (Heaven knows why!) had taken it into his head to adorn the bald pate of my childhood’s days with a red wig parted in the middle—­now looked to me so strange and ridiculous that I wondered how I could ever have failed to observe the fact before.  Even between the girls and ourselves there seemed to have sprung up an invisible barrier.  They, too, began to have secrets among themselves, as well as to evince a desire to show off their ever-lengthening skirts even as we boys did our trousers and ankle-straps.  As for Mimi, she appeared at luncheon, the first Sunday, in such a gorgeous dress and with so many ribbons in her cap that it was clear that we were no longer en campagne, and that everything was now going to be different.

V. MY ELDER BROTHER

I was only a year and some odd months younger than Woloda, and from the first we had grown up and studied and played together.  Hitherto, the difference between elder and younger brother had never been felt between us, but at the period of which I am speaking, I began to have a notion that I was not Woloda’s equal either in years, in tastes, or in capabilities.  I even began to fancy that Woloda himself was aware of his superiority and that he was proud of it, and, though, perhaps, I was wrong, the idea wounded my conceit—­already suffering from frequent comparison with him.  He was my superior in everything—­in games, in studies, in quarrels, and in deportment.  All this brought about an estrangement between us and occasioned me moral sufferings which I had never hitherto experienced.

When for the first time Woloda wore Dutch pleated shirts, I at once said that I was greatly put out at not being given similar ones, and each time that he arranged his collar, I felt that he was doing so on purpose to offend me.  But, what tormented me most of all was the idea that Woloda could see through me, yet did not choose to show it.

Who has not known those secret, wordless communications which spring from some barely perceptible smile or movement—­from a casual glance between two persons who live as constantly together as do brothers, friends, man and wife, or master and servant—­particularly if those two persons do not in all things cultivate mutual frankness?  How many half-expressed wishes, thoughts, and meanings which one shrinks from revealing are made plain by a single accidental glance which timidly and irresolutely meets the eye!