I sent Elisei, whom I had taken into my service after the death of
Pasinkov, with my visiting-card to her door, and told him to inquire
whether she was at home, and whether I might see her. Elisei quickly
came back and announced that Sophia Nikolaevna was at home and would
see me.

I went at once to Sophia Nikolaevna. When I went in, she was standing
in the middle of the room, taking leave of a tall stout gentleman.

'As you like,' he was saying in a rich, mellow voice; 'he is not a
harmless person, he's a useless person; and every useless person in a
well-ordered society is harmful, harmful, harmful!'

With those words the tall gentleman went out. Sophia Nikolaevna turned
to me.

'How long it is since we met!' she said. 'Sit down, please....'

We sat down. I looked at her.... To see again after long absence the
features of a face once dear, perhaps beloved, to recognise them, and
not recognise them, as though across the old, unforgotten countenance a
new one, like, but strange, were looking out at one; instantaneously,
almost unconsciously, to note the traces time has laid upon it;--all
this is rather melancholy. 'I too must have changed in the same way,'
each is inwardly thinking....

Sophia Nikolaevna did not, however, look much older; though, when I had
seen her last, she was sixteen, and that was nine years ago.