“Mais c’est une dame et très comme il faut,” thought Stepan Trofimovitch, as he recovered from Anisim’s attack, gazing with agreeable curiosity at his neighbour, the gospel pedlar, who was, however, drinking the tea from a saucer and nibbling at a piece of sugar. “ Ce petit morceau de sucre, ce n’est rien.… There is something noble and independent about her, and at the same time—gentle. Le comme il faut tout pur, but rather in a different style.”
He soon learned from her that her name was Sofya Matveyevna Ulitin and she lived at K——, that she had a sister there, a widow; that she was a widow too, and that her husband, who was a sub-lieutenant risen from the ranks, had been killed at Sevastopol.
“But you are still so young, vous n’avez pas trente ans.”
“Thirty-four,” said Sofya Matveyevn
