“Do you say he is consumptive?”
“Yes. It really would be happier for him to die young. If I were in his place I should certainly long for death. He is unhappy about his brother and sisters, the children you saw. If it were possible, if we only had a little money, we should leave our respective families, and live together in a little apartment of our own. It is our dream. But, do you know, when I was talking over your affair with him, he was angry, and said that anyone who did not call out a man who had given him a blow was a coward. He is very irritable today, and I left off arguing the matter with him. So Nastasia Philipovna has invited you to go and see her?”
“To tell the truth, she has not.”
“Then how do you come to be going there?” cried Colia, so much astonished that he stopped short in the middle of the pavement. “And … and are you going to her ‘At Home’ in that costume?”
“I don’t know, really, whether I shall be allowed in at all. If she will receive me, so much the better. If not, the matter is ended. As to my clothes—what can I do?”
“Are you going there for some particular reason, or only as a way of getting into her society, and that of her friends?”
“No, I have really an object in going … That is, I am going on business it is difficult to explain, but …”
“Well, whether you go on business or not is your affair, I do not want to know. The only important thing, in my eyes, is that you should not be going there simply for the pleasure of spending your evening in such company—cocottes, generals, usurers! If that were the case I should