“It must be some time, though: it can’t go on like this,” he said to Small Stiva, who said, “No no can’t go on no.” Thus encouraged, Stiva squared his chest, took out a cigarette, took two whiffs at it and flung it into a Class I mother-of-pearl ashtray, which instantly and automatically filled with a half inch of water, extinguishing the smoldering butt. With rapid steps he walked through the drawing room, and opened the other door into his wife’s bedroom.
CHAPTER 4
DARYA ALEXANDROVNA, in a dressing jacket, with her now scanty, once luxuriant and beautiful, hair fastened up with hairpins on the nape of her neck, was standing before an open bureau among a litter of all sorts of things scattered all over the room. Hearing her husband’s steps, she stopped, looking toward the door; Dolichka, by angling her linear eyebrows into a sharp V, gave her features a severe and contemptuous expression. Dolly and her companion android alike felt afraid of Stepan Arkadyich, and afraid of the coming interview. They were just attempting to do what they had attempted to do ten times already in these last three days-to sort out the children’s things so as to take them to her mother’s-but again Darya Alexandrovna could not bring herself to do this. She said to Dolichka, as each time before, “Things cannot go on like this! I must take some step to punish him!” and as always Dolichka confirmed her in her opinions, supporting her in all things, exactly as it was the sole purpose of her existence to do.