One day I was not well, I stopped at home alone; Katya and Sonya had driven with him to Nikolskoe to look at the new building there. The table was set for tea, I went down, and while waiting for them sat down to the piano. I opened the sonata quasi una fantasia, and began playing it. No one was within sight or hearing, the windows were open into the garden, and the familiar, majestically melancholy music resounded in the room. I finished the first part, and quite unconsciously, from old habit, looked round to the corner in which he used once to sit listening to me. But he was not there. The chair, long unmoved, stood in the corner; and past the open window I could see the lilac in the bright sunset, and the evening freshness flowed into the room. I leaned my elbows on the piano, hid my face in both hands, and pondered. I sat a long while so, with a heartache recalling all the past that could not come back, and timidly considering what was to come. But before me it seemed that there was nothing; it seemed that I desired nothing and hoped for nothing. ‘Can I have lived out my life?’ I thought with horror; and lifting my head, I tried to forget myself, to escape thinking by playing again, and began again the same andante. ‘My God!’ I thought, ‘forgive me, if I am in fault, or restore me what was once so good in my soul, and teach me what to do, how to live now!’ The sounds of wheels over the grass and at the entrance reached me, and familiar steps could be heard stepping cautiously in the verandah and ceasing. But the old feeling did not stir in response to those familiar footsteps. When I had finished, I heard the steps behind me, and a hand was laid on my shoulder.
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