Demons

Anton returns to Stepan’s house. Stepan has just come back from visiting Liza and Praskovya. Stepan tells Anton that he’s as fond of Liza as ever, but he’s convinced that she and her mother were trying to pry some gossip from him the whole time he was there. A note then arrives from Varvara. She asks Stepan to come to her house tomorrow. She says that she’ll invite Shatov, Darya’s brother, and she hopes that might give Stepan the formality he’s wanted. Stepan becomes exasperated. He thinks that Varvara is making light of the situation by mocking Stepan’s desire for “formality.”

Stepan tells Anton that he recently wrote letters to both Nikolay and Darya. In the letters, he asked both of them if his marriage to Darya would interfere with anything that might have happened, or might have begun to happen, during their time together in Switzerland. Anton grows angry and asks Stepan why he wrote letters that would add fuel to the gossip that has been ignited in town. Stepan says he probably shouldn’t have written the letters, as he plans to go through with the marriage regardless, but he can’t change the past. He then cries out to Anton and asks why Varvara is doing all of this. He says that surely she must know that he has loved her and only her for 20 years. Anton is taken aback. He’s never heard Stepan say that before, and he fights back an urge to laugh.