knowing these things. My acquaintance with the doctor elevated me
morally too. I was continually arguing with him and, though I usually
remained of my own opinion, yet, thanks to him, I began to perceive
that everything was not clear to me, and I began trying to work out
as far as I could definite convictions in myself, that the dictates
of conscience might be definite, and that there might be nothing
vague in my mind. Yet, though he was the most cultivated and best
man in the town, he was nevertheless far from perfection. In his
manners, in his habit of turning every conversation into an argument,
in his pleasant tenor, even in his friendliness, there was something
coarse, like a divinity student, and when he took off his coat and
sat in his silk shirt, or flung a tip to a waiter in the restaurant,
I always fancied that culture might be all very well, but the Tatar
was fermenting in him still.

At Epiphany he went back to Petersburg. He went off in the morning,
and after dinner my sister came in. Without taking off her fur coat
and her cap she sat down in silence, very pale, and kept her eyes
fixed on the same spot. She was chilled by the frost and one could
see that she was upset by it.

"You must have caught cold," I said.

Her eyes filled with tears; she got up and went out to Karpovna
without saying a word to me, as though I had hurt her feelings. And
a little later I heard her saying, in a tone of bitter reproach:

"Nurse, what have I been living for till now? What? Tell me, haven't
I wasted my youth? All the best years of my life to know nothing
but keeping accounts, pouring out tea, counting the halfpence,