Mikhail Fiodorovich ought to have gone abroad long ago, but he has postponed his departure every week. There have been some changes in him lately. He’s suddenly got thin, begun to be affected by drink--a thing that never happened to him before, and his black eyebrows have begun to get grey. When our buggy stops at the gate he cannot hide his joy and impatience. Anxiously he helps Katy and me from the buggy, hastily asks us questions, laughs, slowly rubs his hands, and that gentle, prayerful, pure something that I used to notice only in his eyes is now poured over all his face. He is happy and at the same time ashamed of his happiness, ashamed of his habit of coming to Katy’s every evening, and he finds it necessary to give a reason for his coming, some obvious absurdity, like: “I was passing on business, and I thought I’d just drop in for a second.” All three of us go indoors. First we drink tea, then our old friends, the two packs of cards, appear on the table, with a big piece of cheese, some fruit, and a bottle of Crimean champagne. The subjects of conversation are not new, but all exactly the same as they were in the winter. The university, the students, literature, the theatre--all of them come in for it. The air thickens with slanders, and grows more close. It is poisoned by the breath, not of two toads as in winter, but now by all three. Besides the velvety, baritone laughter and the accordion-like giggle, the maid who waits upon us hears also the unpleasant jarring laugh of a musical comedy general: “He, he, he!” V There sometimes come fearful nights with thunder, lightning, rain, and wind, which the peasants call “sparrow-nights.” There was one such sparrow-night in my own personal life.... I wake after midnight and suddenly leap out of bed. Somehow it seems to me that I am going to die immediately. I do not know why, for there is no single sensation in my body which points to a quick end; but a terror presses on my soul as though I had suddenly seen a huge, ill-boding fire in the sky. I light the lamp quickly and drink some water straight out of the decanter. Then I hurry to the window. The weather is magnificent. The air smells of hay and some delicious thing besides. I see the spikes of my garden fence, the sleepy starveling trees by the window, the road, the dark strip of forest. There is a calm and brilliant moon in the sky and not a single cloud. Serenity. Not a leaf stirs. To me it seems that everything is looking at me and listening for me to die. Dread seizes me. I shut the window and run to the bed, I feel for my pulse. I cannot find it in my wrist; I seek it in my temples, my chin, my hand again. They are all cold and slippery with sweat. My breathing comes quicker and quicker; my body trembles, all my bowels are stirred, and my face and forehead feel as though a cobweb had settled on them. What shall I do? Shall I call my family? No use. I do not know what my wife and Liza will do when they come in to me.