It was Friday, and in the dining room the German watchmaker was
winding up the clock. Stepan Arkadyevitch remembered his joke
about this punctual, bald watchmaker, "that the German was wound
up for a whole lifetime himself, to wind up watches," and he
smiled. Stepan Arkadyevitch was fond of a joke: "And maybe she
will come round! That's a good expression, '_come round,_'" he
thought. "I must repeat that."
"Matvey!" he shouted. "Arrange everything with Darya in the
sitting room for Anna Arkadyevna," he said to Matvey when he came
in.
"Yes, sir."
Stepan Arkadyevitch put on his fur coat and went out onto the
steps.
"You won't dine at home?" said Matvey, seeing him off.
"That's as it happens. But here's for the housekeeping," he
said, taking ten roubles from his pocketbook. "That'll be
enough."
"Enough or not enough, we must make it do," said Matvey, slamming
the carriage door and stepping back onto the steps.
Darya Alexandrovna meanwhile having pacified the child, and
knowing from the sound of the carriage that he had gone off, went
back again to her bedroom. It was her solitary refuge from the
household cares which crowded upon her directly she went out from
it. Even now, in the short time she had been in the nursery, the
English governess and Matrona Philimonovna had succeeded in
putting several questions to her, which did not admit of delay,
and which only she could answer: "What were the children to put
on for their walk? Should they have any milk? Should not a new
cook be sent for?"
"Ah, let me alone, let me alone!" she said, and going back to her
bedroom she sat down in the same place as she had sat when
talking to her husband, clasping tightly her thin hands with the
rings that slipped down on her bony fingers, and fell to going
over in her memory all the conversation. "He has gone! But has
he broken it off with her?" she thought. "Can it be he sees her?
Why didn't I ask him! No, no, reconciliation is impossible.
Even if we remain in the same house, we are strangers--strangers
forever!" She repeated again with special significance the word
so dreadful to her. "And how I loved him! my God, how I loved
him!.... How I loved him! And now don't I love him? Don't I
love him more than before? The most horrible thing is," she
began, but did not finish her thought, because Matrona
Philimonovna put her head in at the door.