“It’s a true saying:  gentle birth and a grade in the service won’t put a coat on your back.  A cockade in your cap and a noble title, but nothing to eat.  To my thinking, if any one of humble class helps the poor he is much more of a gentleman than any Tchalikov who has sunk into poverty and vice.”

To flatter Anna Akimovna, he uttered a few more disparaging phrases about his gentle birth, and it was evident that he was humbling himself because he considered himself superior to her.  Meanwhile she had finished her letter and had sealed it up.  The letter would be thrown away and the money would not be spent on medicine—­that she knew, but she put twenty-five roubles on the table all the same, and after a moment’s thought, added two more red notes.  She saw the wasted, yellow hand of Madame Tchalikov, like the claw of a hen, dart out and clutch the money tight.

“You have graciously given this for medicine,” said Tchalikov in a quivering voice, “but hold out a helping hand to me also . . . and the children!” he added with a sob.  “My unhappy children!  I am not afraid for myself; it is for my daughters I fear!  It’s the hydra of vice that I fear!”

Trying to open her purse, the catch of which had gone wrong, Anna Akimovna was confused and turned red.  She felt ashamed that people should be standing before her, looking at her hands and waiting, and most likely at the bottom of their hearts laughing at her.  At that instant some one came into the kitchen and stamped his feet, knocking the snow off.

“The lodger has come in,” said Madame Tchalikov.

Anna Akimovna grew even more confused.  She did not want any one from the factory to find her in this ridiculous position.  As ill-luck would have it, the lodger came in at the very moment when, having broken the catch at last, she was giving Tchalikov some notes, and Tchalikov, grunting as though he were paraylzed, was feeling about with his lips where he could kiss her.  In the lodger she recognized the workman who had once clanked the sheet-iron before her in the forge, and had explained things to her.  Evidently he had come in straight from the factory; his face looked dark and grimy, and on one cheek near his nose was a smudge of soot.  His hands were perfectly black, and his unbelted shirt shone with oil and grease.  He was a man of thirty, of medium height, with black hair and broad shoulders, and a look of great physical strength.  At the first glance Anna Akimovna perceived that he must be a foreman, who must be receiving at least thirty-five roubles a month, and a stern, loud-voiced man who struck the workmen in the face; all this was evident from his manner of standing, from the attitude he involuntarily assumed at once on seeing a lady in his room, and most of all from the fact that he did not wear top-boots, that he had breast pockets, and a pointed, picturesquely clipped beard.  Her father, Akim Ivanovitch, had been the brother of the factory owner, and yet he had been afraid of foremen like this lodger and had tried to win their favour.