your wife, Anfisa Karpovna, but you shan't worry me into my grave!'
'Indeed?' 'No! you shan't.' 'Indeed?' 'No! you shan't.' They kept it up
in this fashion for some time. My position was, as you perceive, not
merely an unenviable one: it was positively idiotic. I couldn't
conceive what had induced Kolosov to bring me.... I have never been a
good card-player; but on that occasion I was aware myself that I was
playing excruciatingly badly. 'No!' the retired lieutenant repeated
continually,' you can't hold a candle to Sevastianovitch! No! you play
carelessly!' I, you may be sure, was inwardly wishing him at the devil.
This torture continued for two hours; they beat me hollow. Before the
end of the last rubber, I heard a slight sound behind my chair--I
looked round and saw Kolosov; beside him stood a girl of seventeen, who
was watching me with a scarcely perceptible smile. 'Fill me my pipe,
Varia,' muttered Ivan Semyonitch. The girl promptly flew off into the
other room. She was not very pretty, rather pale, rather thin; but
never before or since have I seen such hair, such eyes. We finished the
rubber somehow; I paid up, Sidorenko lighted his pipe and grumbled:

'Well, now it's time for supper!' Kolosov presented me to Varia, that
is, to Varvara Ivanovna, the daughter of Ivan Semyonitch. Varia was
embarrassed; I too was embarrassed. But in a few minutes Kolosov, as
usual, had got everything and everyone into full swing; he sat Varia
down to the piano, begged her to play a dance tune, and proceeded to
dance a Cossack dance in competition with Ivan Semyonitch. The
lieutenant uttered little shrieks, stamped and cut such incredible
capers that even Matrona Semyonovna burst out laughing and retreated to
her own room upstairs. The hunchback old woman laid the table; we sat
down to supper. At supper Kolosov told all sorts of nonsensical
stories; the lieutenant's guffaws were deafening; I peeped from under
my eyelids at Varia. She never took her eyes off Kolosov ... and from