'If you guess who it is writes to you, and if it is not a bore to you, come
to-morrow after dinner to the Tversky boulevard--about five o'clock--and
wait. You shall not be kept long. But it is very important. Do come.'

There was no signature. Aratov at once guessed who was his correspondent,
and this was just what disturbed him. 'What folly,' he said, almost aloud;
'this is too much. Of course I shan't go.' He sent, however, for the
messenger, and from him learnt nothing but that the note had been handed
him by a maid-servant in the street. Dismissing him, Aratov read the letter
through and flung it on the ground.... But, after a little while, he picked
it up and read it again: a second time he cried, 'Folly!'--he did not,
however, throw the note on the floor again, but put it in a drawer. Aratov
took up his ordinary occupations, first one and then another; but nothing
he did was successful or satisfactory. He suddenly realised that he was
eagerly expecting Kupfer! Did he want to question him, or perhaps even to
confide in him?... But Kupfer did not make his appearance. Then Aratov took
down Pushkin, read Tatiana's letter, and convinced himself again that the
'gipsy girl' had not in the least understood the real force of the letter.
And that donkey Kupfer shouts: Rachel! Viardot! Then he went to his piano,
as it seemed, unconsciously opened it, and tried to pick out by ear the
melody of Tchaykovsky's song; but he slammed it to again directly in
vexation, and went up to his aunt to her special room, which was for ever
baking hot, smelled of mint, sage, and other medicinal herbs, and was
littered up with such a multitude of rugs, side-tables, stools, cushions,
and padded furniture of all sorts, that any one unused to it would have
found it difficult to turn round and oppressive to breathe in it. Platonida
Ivanovna was sitting at the window, her knitting in her hands (she was
knitting her darling Yasha a comforter, the thirty-eighth she had made him
in the course of his life!), and was much astonished to see him. Aratov