'Both of you?'
'I am married. My wife is not very well to-day, and that's why she did not come too. Though, indeed, it's quite enough for one person to go through this empty formality, this ceremony. As if anybody believed in it all!'
I was a little surprised at Baburin's last words, but I said nothing, called a cab, and proposed to Baburin to take him home; but he refused.
The same day I went in the evening to see him. All the way there I was thinking of Punin. I recalled how I had met him the first time, and how ecstatic and amusing he was in those days; and afterwards in Moscow how subdued he had grown—especially the last time I saw him; and now he had made his last reckoning with life;—life is in grim earnest, it seems! Baburin was living in the Viborgsky quarter, in a little house which reminded me of the Moscow 'nest': the Petersburg abode was almost shabbier in appearance. When I went into his room he was sitting on a chair in a corner with his hands on his knees; a tallow candle, burning low, dimly lighted up his bowed, white head. He heard the sound of my footsteps, started up, and welcomed me more warmly than I had expected. A few moments later his wife came in; I recognised her at once as Musa—and only then understood why
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