Sofya Matveyevna told her after a fashion, giving a very brief account of herself, however, beginning with Sevastopol. Varvara Petrovna listened in silence, sitting up erect in her chair, looking sternly straight into the speaker’s eyes.

“Why are you so frightened? Why do you look at the ground? I like people who look me straight in the face and hold their own with me. Go on.”

She told of their meeting, of her books, of how Stepan Trofimovitch had regaled the peasant woman with vodka⁠ ⁠… “That’s right, that’s right, don’t leave out the slightest detail,” Varvara Petrovna encouraged her.

At last she described how they had set off, and how Stepan Trofimovitch had gone on talking, “really ill by that time,” and here had given an account of his life from the very beginning, talking for some hours. “Tell me about his life.”

Sofya Matveyevna suddenly stopped and was completely nonplussed.