to-day. He felt sad without knowing why. He felt as if some invisible
being were drawing him on, calling to him in an inaudible whisper,
demanding something--what? And who was it approaching their house?
Why? Friend or foe? It was a stranger--yet curiously intimate.

At that moment, when the sisters were taking leave of the children in
the wood, Kirsha felt especially perturbed. In the far corner of the
garden he saw a boy in white dress; he ran up to him. They spoke long
and quietly. Then Kirsha ran to his father.

Giorgiy Sergeyevitch Trirodov was all alone at home. He was lying on
the sofa, reading a book by Wilde.

Trirodov was forty years old. He was slender and erect. His
short-trimmed hair and clean-shaven face made him look very young.
Only on closer scrutiny it was possible to detect the many grey hairs,
the wrinkles on the forehead around the eyes. His face was pale. His
broad forehead seemed very large--it was partly due to a narrow chin,
lean cheeks, and baldness.

The room where Trirodov was reading--his study--was large, bright, and
simple, with a white, unpainted floor as smooth as a mirror. The walls
were lined with open bookcases. In the wall opposite the windows,
between the bookcases, a narrow space was left, large enough for a man
to stand in. It gave the impression of a door being there, hidden by
hangings. In the middle of the room stood a very large table, upon
which lay books, papers, and several strange objects--hexahedral
prisms of an unfamiliar substance, heavy and solid in appearance, dark
red in colour, with purple, blue, grey, and black spots, and with
veins running across it.