The old man at first stared fixedly at his son, and an unnatural smile disclosed the fresh gap between his teeth to which Prince Andréy could not get accustomed.
“What companion, my dear boy? Eh? You’ve already been talking it over! Eh?”
“Father, I did not want to judge,” said Prince Andréy, in a hard and bitter tone, “but you challenged me, and I have said, and always shall say, that Márya is not to blame, but those to blame—the one to blame—is that Frenchwoman.”
“Ah, he has passed judgment … passed judgement!” said the old man in a low voice and, as it seemed to Prince Andréy, with some embarrassment, but then he suddenly jumped up and cried: “Be off, be off! Let not a trace of you remain here! …”
Prince Andréy wished to leave at once, but Princess Márya persuaded him to stay another day. That day he did not see his father, who did not leave his room and admitted no one but Mademoiselle Bourienne and Tíkhon, but asked several times whether his son had gone. Next day, before leaving, Prince Andréy went to his son’s rooms. The boy, curly-headed like his mother and glowing with health, sat on his knee, and Prince Andréy began telling him the story of Bluebeard, but fell into a reverie without finishing the story. He thought not of this pretty child, his son whom he held on his knee, but of himself. He sought in himself either remorse for having angered his father or regret at leaving home for the first time in his life on bad terms with him, and was horrified to find neither. What meant still more to him was that he sought and did not find in himself the former tenderness for his son which he had hoped to reawaken by caressing the boy and taking him on his knee.