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Don't talk so much!" He is solitary. He leads a dreary life; nothing interests him. During all the years he had lived at Dyalizh his love for Kitten had been his one joy, and probably his last. In the evenings he plays vint at the club, and then sits alone at a big table and has supper.
And every one roared with laughter. "It's entertaining," thought Startsev, as he went out into the street. He went to a restaurant and drank some beer, then set off to walk home to Dyalizh; he walked all the way singing: "'Thy voice to me so languid and caressing. . . ." On going to bed, he felt not the slightest fatigue after the six miles' walk.
Is that a bedroom? And what's here?" And as he does so he breathes heavily and wipes the sweat from his brow. He has a great deal to do, but still he does not give up his work as district doctor; he is greedy for gain, and he tries to be in all places at once. At Dyalizh and in the town he is called simply "Ionitch": "Where is Ionitch off to?" or "Should not we call in Ionitch to a consultation?"
And as soon as Dmitri Ionitch Startsev was appointed the district doctor, and took up his abode at Dyalizh, six miles from S , he, too, was told that as a cultivated man it was essential for him to make the acquaintance of the Turkins. In the winter he was introduced to Ivan Petrovitch in the street; they talked about the weather, about the theatre, about the cholera; an invitation followed.
After the winter spent at Dyalizh among patients and peasants, to sit in a drawing-room, to watch this young, elegant, and, in all probability, pure creature, and to listen to these noisy, tedious but still cultured sounds, was so pleasant, so novel. . . . "Well, Kitten, you have played as never before," said Ivan Petrovitch, with tears in his eyes, when his daughter had finished and stood up.
How are things? I have been thinking about you all these days," she went on nervously. "I wanted to write to you, wanted to come myself to see you at Dyalizh. I quite made up my mind to go, but afterwards I thought better of it. God knows what your attitude is towards me now; I have been looking forward to seeing you to-day with such emotion. For goodness' sake let us go into the garden."
Afterwards, remembering sometimes how he had wandered about the cemetery or how he had driven all over the town to get a dress suit, he stretched lazily and said: "What a lot of trouble, though!" Four years had passed. Startsev already had a large practice in the town. Every morning he hurriedly saw his patients at Dyalizh, then he drove in to see his town patients.
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