seen him, three years before. He wore a short overcoat. His hands and his bony frame seemed to him more colossal than ever. His hair had grown thinner, but the same stiff mustaches hid his lips, the same eyes glared at his visitor uncannily and naïvely.
"Ah, Kostia!" he suddenly cried, recognizing his brother, and his eyes shone with joy. But the same instant he fixed his eyes on the younger man, and made a quick, convulsive motion of his head and neck, as if his cravat choked him, a gesture well known to Konstantin; and an entirely different expression, wild, and bitter, and expressive of martyrdom, came into his sunken face.
"I wrote both to you and to Sergeï Ivanuitch that I do not know you, nor wish to know you. What do you want; what does either of you want?"
He was not at all as Konstantin had imagined him. The hardest and vilest elements of his character, which had made any relations with him difficult, had faded from Konstantin Levin's memory whenever he thought about him; and now, when he saw his face and the characteristic convulsive motions of his head, he remembered it all.
"But I wanted nothing of you except to see you," he replied timidly. "I only came to see you."
His brother's diffidence apparently disarmed Nikolai. His lips relaxed.
"Ah! did you?" said he. "Well! come in, sit down. Do you want some supper? Masha, bring enough for three. No, hold on! Do you know who this is?" he asked his brother, pointing to the young man in the peasant's coat. "This gentleman is Mr.Kritsky, a friend of mine from Kiev, a very remarkable man. It seems the police are after him, because he is not a coward."
And he looked, as his habit was, at all who were in the room. Then, seeing that the woman, who stood at the door, was about to leave, he shouted:—
"Wait, I tell you."
Then, in his extravagant, incoherent manner of
