Katya (Yekaterina Vladimirovna)

Nikolai Stepanovich's ward in "A Dreary Story," daughter of a deceased colleague who left her a fortune and named the narrator her guardian. A trusting, curious child who grew into a passionate devotee of the theater, she became an actress, had a ruinous love affair on tour that ended in a lost child and an attempted suicide, and returned to live in idle, faded disillusionment near the narrator -- the one person whose company still gives him real feeling. The novella closes with her repeated, desperate question, "What am I to do?", and his admission that he does not know.