He was utterly exhausted,
and had no sooner greeted his father and his sister Ludmilla (who was
always called Lialia) than he lay down on her bed, and fell asleep.
He did not wake until evening, when the sun was near the horizon, and
its slanting rays, falling through the panes, threw rosy squares upon
the wall. In the next room there was a clatter of spoons and glasses;
he could hear Lialia's merry laugh, and also a man's voice both
pleasant and refined which he did not know. At first it seemed to him
as if he were still in the railway-carriage and heard the noise of the
train, the rattle of the window-panes and the voices of travellers in
the next compartment. But he quickly remembered where he was, and sat
bolt upright on the bed. "Yes, here I am," he yawned, as, frowning, he
thrust his fingers through his thick, stubborn black hair.
It then occurred to him that he need never have come home. He had been
allowed to choose where he would stay. Why, then, did he return to his
parents? That he could not explain. He believed, or wished to believe,
that he had fixed upon the most likely place that had occurred to him.
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