Pava, no longer a boy, but a young man with moustaches, threw himself
into an attitude, flung up his arm, and said in a tragic voice:

"Unhappy woman, die!"

All this irritated Startsev. Getting into his carriage, and looking
at the dark house and garden which had once been so precious and
so dear, he thought of everything at once--Vera Iosifovna's novels
and Kitten's noisy playing, and Ivan Petrovitch's jokes and Pava's
tragic posturing, and thought if the most talented people in the
town were so futile, what must the town be?

Three days later Pava brought a letter from Ekaterina Ivanovna.

"You don't come and see us--why?" she wrote to him. "I am afraid
that you have changed towards us. I am afraid, and I am terrified
at the very thought of it. Reassure me; come and tell me that
everything is well.

"I must talk to you.--Your E. I."

----

He read this letter, thought a moment, and said to Pava:

"Tell them, my good fellow, that I can't come to-day; I am very
busy. Say I will come in three days or so."

But three days passed, a week passed; he still did not go. Happening
once to drive past the Turkins' house, he thought he must go in,