Having sat awhile with her visitors without understanding anything of what they were saying, she softly left the room and went to the nursery.

The children were playing at “going to Moscow” in a carriage made of chairs and invited her to go with them. She sat down and played with them a little, but the thought of her husband and his unreasonable crossness worried her. She got up and, walking on tiptoe with difficulty, went to the small sitting room.

“Perhaps he is not asleep; I’ll have an explanation with him,” she said to herself. Andrúsha, her eldest boy, imitating his mother, followed her on tiptoe. She did not notice him.

“Marie, dear, I think he is asleep⁠—he was so tired,” said Sónya, meeting her in the large sitting room (it seemed to Countess Márya that she crossed her path everywhere). “Andrúsha may wake him.”