consumptive woman, with hollow black eyes and a sharp nose, did not
leave her sofa for days together, and was always embroidering
cushion-covers in canvas. As far as I could observe, she was rather
afraid of her husband, as though she had somehow wronged him at some
time or other. The elder daughter, Varvara, a plump, rosy, fair-haired
girl of eighteen, was always sitting at the window, watching the people
that passed by. The son, who was being educated in a government school,
was only seen at home on Sundays, and he, too, did not care to waste
his words. Even the younger daughter, Sophia, the girl with whom I was
in love, was of a silent disposition. In the Zlotnitskys' house there
reigned a perpetual stillness; it was only broken by the piercing
screams of Popka, but visitors soon got used to these, and were
conscious again of the burden and oppression of the eternal stillness.
Visitors, however, seldom looked in upon the Zlotnitskys; their house
was a dull one. The very furniture, the red paper with yellow patterns
in the drawing-room, the numerous rush-bottomed chairs in the
dining-room, the faded wool-work cushions, embroidered with figures of
girls and dogs, on the sofa, the branching lamps, and the
gloomy-looking portraits on the walls--everything inspired an
involuntary melancholy, about everything there clung a sense of chill
and flatness. On my arrival in Petersburg, I had thought it my duty to
call on the Zlotnitskys. They were relations of my mother's. I managed
with difficulty to sit out an hour with them, and it was a long while
before I went there again. But by degrees I took to going oftener and
oftener. I was drawn there by Sophia, whom I had not cared for at
first, and with whom I finally fell in love.

She was a slender, almost thin, girl of medium height, with a pale
face, thick black hair, and big brown eyes, always half closed. Her
severe and well-defined features, especially her tightly shut lips,