Eugène flushed again, not with vexation or shame this time, but with some strange consciousness of the importance of what was about to be told him⁠—an involuntary consciousness quite at variance with his conclusions. And what he expected happened. Mary Pávlovna, as if merely by way of conversation, mentioned that this year only boys were being born⁠—evidently a sign of a coming war. Both at the Vásins and the Péchnikovs the young wife had a first child⁠—at each house a boy. Mary Pávlovna wanted to say this casually, but she herself felt ashamed when she saw the colour mount to her son’s face and saw him nervously removing, tapping, and replacing his pince-nez and hurriedly lighting a cigarette. She became silent. He too was silent and could not think how to break that silence. So they both understood that they had understood one another.

“Yes, the chief thing is that there should be justice and no favouritism in the village⁠—as under your grandfather.”