"You heard, perhaps, about Pryatchnikov?" said Turovtsin, warmed up by the champagne he had drunk, and long waiting for an opportunity to break the silence that had weighed on him.

" Vasya Pryatchnikov," he said, with a good-natured smile on his damp, red lips, addressing himself principally to the most important guest, Alexey Alexandrovitch, "they told me today he fought a duel with Kvitsky at Tver, and has killed him.

" Just as it always seems that one bruises oneself on a sore place, so Stepan Arkadyevitch felt now that the conversation would by ill luck fall every moment on Alexey Alexandrovitch's sore spot.

He would again have got his brother-in-law away, but Alexey Alexandrovitch himself inquired, with curiosity: "What did Pryatchnikov fight about?" "His wife.

Acted like a man, he did! Called him out and shot him!" "Ah!" said Alexey Alexandrovitch indifferently, and lifting his eyebrows, he went into the drawing room.