When Worlds Collide at Home — The Idiot

He has never had her in this house. He put the visit to her debit, to be settled after marriage, and he reads the arrival, with the portrait, as her yes. She pushes past the prince again, merry, and asks why they tie up the bell. Introduce me. Varia will not give even the usual smile. Nina begins her gratified feelings and is left mid-sentence. Where do you squeeze the lodgers? Does this pay? Gania's face goes livid. The prince, still in the doorway, says drink some water, and don't look like that. All the rage lands on him. Gania seizes his shoulder, then laughs it off: are you a doctor? She took him for the footman. Ferdishenko whispers idiot for her benefit. The prince says the portrait struck him, then Rogozhin on the train, then the Epanchins, and at the door he was already thinking of her. He seems to have seen her eyes somewhere. He may have dreamed them. She looks at him and does not laugh.

The father comes in last, the meeting Gania has been moving him out of the way for two months to avoid: evening clothes, dyed moustache, not firm on his legs. Ferdishenko pushes a chair; he flops backwards and stays composed, and kisses her fingers. Do you hide yourself, or does your son hide you? Nina invents an inquiry at the door. Varia asks her mother to leave. No, she will sit it out to the end. Colia jogs the prince's arm, in tears: get him out. The general is already happy, holding forth, three inseparables, bullets at Kars, and then a poodle in a railway carriage, really not worth telling. They make him tell it. Light blue throws the cigar out. He throws the poodle after it. If cigars are forbidden, poodles are much more so. He lost his head. He did not hit her. The Bielokonskis went into mourning. The Epanchins cut him.

Wait, she says. Five or six days since she read the same story in the paper, a Frenchman and an English girl, light blue dress and all. He blushes and says his happened two years earlier. Colia remembers a real quarrel with Miss Smith. She will send him the paper. Ah, that's it, no doubt. Gania seizes his father by the shoulder, voice shaking, eyes full of hatred. A terrific bang hits the front door, almost enough to break it. Colia runs to open.