“I thank you, but I cannot play,” said Albert, almost in a whisper; and he went into his room, and closed the door as softly as possible. After a few minutes, lifting the latch as softly as possible, he came out of the room, bringing the violin. Casting a sharp, angry look at Delesof, he laid the instrument on the table, and again disappeared.

Delesof shrugged his shoulders, and smiled.

“What am I to do now? Wherein am I to blame?” he asked himself.

“Well, how is the musician?” was his first question when he returned home late that evening.

“Bad,” was Zakhár’s short and ringing reply. “He sighs all the time, and coughs, and says nothing at all, only he has asked for vodka four or five times, and once I gave him some. How can we avoid killing him this way, Dmitri Ivánovitch? That was the way the overseer⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, hasn’t he played on the fiddle?”