The orchestra played the overture from “Faust.” Iván Mikhailovich and his wife walked arm in arm through the long, carpeted aisle between two long rows of orchestra chairs toward their seats. Iván Mikhailovich felt as if all eyes were directed toward him, and he tried to walk with greater dignity, with his head proudly thrown back and his rounded paunch thrown forward. Xenia Pavlovna walked with downcast eyes and a face which looked rigidly cold and offended, as if she had been sentenced to die and were walking toward the gallows. The electric lights went out; the curtain rose upon a sea looking very much like a sky and a sky very much like a sea, with some sort of fantastic ruins and tropical vegetation. The traditional Faust, in his brown dressing-gown, nightcap, and long, gray beard, sang in his metallic tenor voice, smoothing his beard with his hand: “Accursed be human science, human prayer, human faith!” At first Xenia Pavlovna was not much affected by either the music or the singing. She looked more than she listened. When the red Mephistopheles appeared and sang that everything was well with him, and that he had plenty of money, Xenia Pavlovna remembered that it would soon be the twentieth and that they owed the butcher for two months. “Emancipation!” she seemed to hear Iván Mikhailovich exclaiming, and when she stopped thinking of the butcher and emancipation, Faust had already thrown off his dressing-gown and beard, and had changed from a decrepit old man into a handsome, strong youth, and this unexpectedness called forth the first smile upon her lips. “To me returned lovely youth!” victoriously sang Faust, approaching the footlights and raising his hand, and Xenia Pavlovna began to think how old she was and how old Iván Mikhailovich was; that their youth had already passed, and would nevermore return. Xenia Pavlovna sighed and stealthily glanced at Iván Mikhailovich’s face. He sat deep in his chair, with head bent to one side and his hands locked over his paunch, and in his well-groomed face, with its waxed and twisted mustaches, there was so much of that self-sufficiency and well-bred sleekness of the native that Xenia Pavlovna hurriedly turned away. During the first entr’acte they went into the lobby of the theatre, she leaning on his arm, and he feeling uneasy the whole time at the thought that his wife’s hair was badly dressed and that her face was not alight with the joy and rapture of the other women, who, with their sparkling eyes and rustling skirts, laughed and talked incessantly in their ringing, happy voices.