Passing through rows of ironical eyes, he was drawn as naturally to her loving glance as a plant to the sun.

`I congratulate you,' she said to him, her eyes on his ribbon.

Suppressing a smile of pleasure, he shrugged his shoulders, closing his eyes, as though to say that that could not be a source of joy to him. Countess Lidia Ivanovna was very well aware that it was one of his chief sources of satisfaction, though he never admitted it.

`How is our angel?' said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, meaning Seriozha.

`I can't say I was quite pleased with him,' said Alexei Alexandrovich, raising his eyebrows and opening his eyes. `And Sitnikov is not satisfied with him.' (Sitnikov was the tutor to whom Seriozha's secular education had been intrusted.) `As I have mentioned to you, there's a sort of coldness in him toward the most important questions which ought to touch the heart of every man and every child....' Alexei Alexandrovich began expounding his views on the sole question that interested him outside the service - the education of his son.

When Alexei Alexandrovich, with Lidia Ivanovna's help, had been brought back anew to life and activity, he felt it his duty to undertake the education of the son left on his hands. Having never before taken any interest in educational questions, Alexei Alexandrovich devoted some time to the theoretical study of the subject. After reading several books on anthropology, education, and didactics, Alexei Alexandrovich drew up a plan of education, and, engaging the best tutor in Peterburg to superintend it, he set to work, and the subject continually absorbed him.

`Yes - but the heart! I see in him his father's heart, and with such a heart a child cannot go far wrong,' said Lidia Ivanovna with enthusiasm.

`Yes, perhaps.... As for me, I do my duty. It's all I can do.'

`You're coming to me,' said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, after a pause; `we have to speak of a subject painful for you. I would give anything to have spared you certain memories, but others are not of the same mind. I have received a letter from her. She is here in Peterburg.'

Alexei Alexandrovich shuddered at the allusion to his wife, but immediately his face assumed the deathlike rigidity which expressed utter helplessness in the matter.

`I was expecting it,' he said.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna looked at him ecstatically, and tears of rapture at the greatness of his soul came into her eyes.