mischief was forbidden us.  We had to go to morning service and to early mass.  When we met priests or monks we had to kiss their hands; at home we had to sing hymns.  Here you are religious and love all that, but I’m afraid of religion, and when I pass a church I remember my childhood, and am overcome with horror.  I was taken to the warehouse as soon as I was eight years old.  I worked like a working boy, and it was bad for my health, for I used to be beaten there every day.  Afterwards when I went to the high school, I used to go to school till dinner-time, and after dinner I had to sit in that warehouse till evening; and things went on like that till I was twenty-two, till I got to know Yartsev, and he persuaded me to leave my father’s house.  That Yartsev did a great deal for me.  I tell you what,” said Laptev, and he laughed with pleasure:  “let us go and pay Yartsev a visit at once.  He’s a very fine fellow!  How touched he will be!”

VII

On a Saturday in November Anton Rubinstein was conducting in a symphony concert.  It was very hot and crowded.  Laptev stood behind the columns, while his wife and Kostya Kotchevoy were sitting in the third or fourth row some distance in front.  At the very beginning of an interval a “certain person,” Polina Nikolaevna Razsudin, quite unexpectedly passed by him.  He had often since his marriage thought with trepidation of a possible meeting with her.  When now she looked at him openly and directly, he realised that he had all this time shirked having things out with her, or writing her two or three friendly lines, as though he had been hiding from her; he felt ashamed and flushed crimson.  She pressed his hand tightly and impulsively and asked: 

“Have you seen Yartsev?”

And without waiting for an answer she went striding on impetuously as though some one were pushing her on from behind.

She was very thin and plain, with a long nose; her face always looked tired, and exhausted, and it seemed as though it were an effort to her to keep her eyes open, and not to fall down.  She had fine, dark eyes, and an intelligent, kind, sincere expression, but her movements were awkward and abrupt.  It was hard to talk to her, because she could not talk or listen quietly.  Loving her was not easy.  Sometimes when she was alone with Laptev she would go on laughing for a long time, hiding her face in her hands, and would declare that love was not the chief thing in life for her, and would be as whimsical as a girl of seventeen; and before kissing her he would have to put out all the candles.  She was thirty.  She was married to a schoolmaster, but had not lived with her husband for years.  She earned her living by giving music lessons and playing in quartettes.