and did not leave him for a minute. The visitor, Father Anastasy,
the priest of one of the villages near the town, had come to him
three hours before on some very unpleasant and dreary business of
his own, had stayed on and on, was now sitting in the corner at a
little round table with his elbow on a thick account book, and
apparently had no thought of going, though it was getting on for
nine o'clock in the evening.

Not everyone knows when to be silent and when to go. It not
infrequently happens that even diplomatic persons of good worldly
breeding fail to observe that their presence is arousing a feeling
akin to hatred in their exhausted or busy host, and that this feeling
is being concealed with an effort and disguised with a lie. But
Father Anastasy perceived it clearly, and realized that his presence
was burdensome and inappropriate, that his Reverence, who had taken
an early morning service in the night and a long mass at midday,
was exhausted and longing for repose; every minute he was meaning
to get up and go, but he did not get up, he sat on as though he
were waiting for something. He was an old man of sixty-five,
prematurely aged, with a bent and bony figure, with a sunken face
and the dark skin of old age, with red eyelids and a long narrow
back like a fish's; he was dressed in a smart cassock of a light
lilac colour, but too big for him (presented to him by the widow
of a young priest lately deceased), a full cloth coat with a broad
leather belt, and clumsy high boots the size and hue of which showed
clearly that Father Anastasy dispensed with goloshes. In spite of
his position and his venerable age, there was something pitiful,
crushed and humiliated in his lustreless red eyes, in the strands
of grey hair with a shade of green in it on the nape of his neck,
and in the big shoulder-blades on his lean back. . . . He sat without