Having finished the paper, a second cup of coffee and a roll and butter, he got up, shaking the crumbs off his waistcoat; and, squaring his broad chest, he smiled joyously; not because there was anything particularly agreeable in his mind - the joyous smile was evoked by a good digestion.
But this joyous smile at once recalled everything to him, and he grew thoughtful.
Two childish voices (Stepan Arkadyevich recognized the voices of Grisha, his youngest boy, and Tania, his eldest girl) were heard outside the door. They were carrying something, and dropped it.
`I told you not to sit passengers on the roof,' said the little girl in English; `there, pick them up!'
`Everything's in confusion,' thought Stepan Arkadyevich; `there are the children running about by themselves.' And going to the door, he called them. They left off the box that represented a train, and came in to their father.
The little girl, her father's favorite, ran up boldly, embraced him and hung laughingly on his neck, enjoying as she always did the well-known smell of scent that came from his whiskers. At last the little girl kissed his face, which was flushed from his stooping posture and beaming with tenderness, loosed her hands, and was about to run away again; but her father held her back.
`How is mamma?' he asked, passing his hand over his daughter's smooth, soft little neck. `Good morning,' he said, smiling to the boy, who had come up to greet him.
He was conscious that he loved the boy less, and always tried to be fair; but the boy felt it, and did not smile responsively to his father's chilly smile.
`Mamma? She is up,' answered the girl.
Stepan Arkadyevich sighed.
`That means she hasn't slept again all night,' he thought.
`Well, is she cheerful?'
The little girl knew that there was a quarrel between her father and mother, and that her mother could not be cheerful, and that her father must be aware of this, and that he was pretending when he asked about it so lightly. And she blushed for her father. He at once perceived it, and blushed too.
`I don't know,' she said. `She did not say we must do our lessons, but she said we were to go for a walk with Miss Hoole to grandmamma's.'
`Well, go, Tania, my darling. Oh, wait a minute, though,' he said, still holding her and stroking her soft little hand.
He took off the mantelpiece, where he had put it yesterday, a little box of sweets, and gave her two, picking out her favorites, a chocolate and a bonbon.
`For Grisha?' said the little girl, pointing to the chocolate.
`Yes, yes.' And still stroking her little shoulder, he kissed the nape of her neck, and let her go.
`The carriage is ready,' said Matvei; `but there's someone to see you with a petition.'
`Been here long?' asked Stepan Arkadyevich.
`Half an hour or so.'
`How many times have I told you to tell me at once?'
`One must let you drink your coffee in peace, at least,' said Matvei, in the affectionately gruff tone with which it was impossible to be angry.
`Well, show the person up at once,' said Oblonsky, frowning with vexation.
The petitioner, the widow of a staff captain Kalinin, came with a request impossible and unreasonable; but Stepan Arkadyevich, as he generally did, made her sit down, heard her to the end attentively without interrupting her, and gave her detailed advice as to how and to whom to apply, and even wrote for her, easily and clearly, in his large, sprawling calligraphic and legible hand, a little note to a personage who might be of use to her.
Having got rid of the staff captain's widow, Stepan Arkadyevich took his hat and stopped to recollect whether he had forgotten anything. It appeared that he had forgotten nothing except what he wanted to forget - his wife.
`Ah, yes!' He bowed his head, and his handsome face assumed a melancholy expression. `To go, or not to go?' he said to himself; and an inner voice told him he must not go, that nothing could come of it but falsity; that to amend, to set right their relations was impossible, because it was impossible to make her attractive again and able to inspire love, or to make him an old man, not susceptible to love. Except deceit and lying nothing could come of it now; and deceit and lying were opposed to his nature.
`It must be some day, though: it can't go on like this,' he said, trying to give himself courage. He set straight his chest, took out a cigarette, lighted it, took two whiffs at it, flung it into a mother-of-pearl ash tray, and with rapid steps walked through the drawing room and opened the other door into his wife's bedroom.
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