“She is not in the very least sorry for me,” he thought of his sister-in-law. “She cannot even understand my sorrow. And what of her?” He was thinking of his daughter. “She knows what all this means to me⁠—the torture. What a blow in one’s old age! My days will be shortened by it! But I’d rather have it over than endure this agony. And all that ‘ pour les beaux yeux d’un chenapan ’⁠—oh!” he moaned; and a wave of hatred and fury arose in him as he thought of what would be said in the town when everyone knew. (And no doubt everyone knew already.) Such a feeling of rage possessed him that he would have liked to beat it into her head, and make her understand what she had done. These women never understand. “It is quite near Everything,” suddenly came to his mind, and getting out his notebook, he found her address. Vera Ivanovna Silvestrova, Kukonskaya Street, Abromov’s house. She was living under this name. He left the gardens and called a cab.

“Whom do you wish to see, sir?” asked the midwife, Maria Ivanovna, when he stepped on the narrow landing of the steep, stuffy staircase.