She smiled and shook her head doubtfully: "My father sometimes eats
bread dipped in kvass," she said. "It's a fancy, a whim!"

At that moment there was a ring and she got up.

"The rich and well-educated ought to work like everyone else," she
said, "and if there is comfort it ought to be equal for all. There
ought not to be any privileges. But that's enough philosophizing.
Tell me something amusing. Tell me about the painters. What are
they like? Funny?"

The doctor came in; I began telling them about the painters, but,
being unaccustomed to talking, I was constrained, and described
them like an ethnologist, gravely and tediously. The doctor, too,
told us some anecdotes of working men: he staggered about, shed
tears, dropped on his knees, and, even, mimicking a drunkard, lay
on the floor; it was as good as a play, and Mariya Viktorovna laughed
till she cried as she looked at him. Then he played on the piano
and sang in his thin, pleasant tenor, while Mariya Viktorovna stood
by and picked out what he was to sing, and corrected him when he
made a mistake.

"I've heard that you sing, too?" I enquired.

"Sing, too!" cried the doctor in horror. "She sings exquisitely, a
perfect artist, and you talk of her 'singing too'! What an idea!"

"I did study in earnest at one time," she said, answering my question,
"but now I have given it up."