My sister used to lie down in one room, and Radish, who had been ill again and was now better, in another.  Just at the moment when I received this letter my sister went softly into the painter’s room, sat down beside him and began reading aloud.  She read to him every day, Ostrovsky or Gogol, and he listened, staring at one point, not laughing, but shaking his head and muttering to himself from time to time: 

“Anything may happen!  Anything may happen!”

If anything ugly or unseemly were depicted in the play he would say as though vindictively, thrusting his finger into the book: 

“There it is, lying!  That’s what it does, lying does.”

The plays fascinated him, both from their subjects and their moral, and from their skilful, complex construction, and he marvelled at “him,” never calling the author by his name.  How neatly he has put it all together.

This time my sister read softly only one page, and could read no more:  her voice would not last out.  Radish took her hand and, moving his parched lips, said, hardly audibly, in a husky voice: 

“The soul of a righteous man is white and smooth as chalk, but the soul of a sinful man is like pumice stone.  The soul of a righteous man is like clear oil, but the soul of a sinful man is gas tar.  We must labour, we must sorrow, we must suffer sickness,” he went on, “and he who does not labour and sorrow will not gain the Kingdom of Heaven.  Woe, woe to them that are well fed, woe to the mighty, woe to the rich, woe to the moneylenders!  Not for them is the Kingdom of Heaven.  Lice eat grass, rust eats iron. . .”

“And lying the soul,” my sister added laughing.  I read the letter through once more.  At that moment there walked into the kitchen a soldier who had been bringing us twice a week parcels of tea, French bread and game, which smelt of scent, from some unknown giver.  I had no work.  I had had to sit at home idle for whole days together, and probably whoever sent us the French bread knew that we were in want.

I heard my sister talking to the soldier and laughing gaily.  Then, lying down, she ate some French bread and said to me: 

“When you wouldn’t go into the service, but became a house painter, Anyuta Blagovo and I knew from the beginning that you were right, but we were frightened to say so aloud.  Tell me what force is it that hinders us from saying what one thinks?  Take Anyuta Blagovo now, for instance.  She loves you, she adores you, she knows you are right, she loves me too, like a sister, and knows that I am right, and I daresay in her soul envies me, but some force prevents her from coming to see us, she shuns us, she is afraid.”

My sister crossed her arms over her breast, and said passionately: 

“How she loves you, if only you knew!  She has confessed her love to no one but me, and then very secretly in the dark.  She led me into a dark avenue in the garden, and began whispering how precious you were to her.  You will see, she’ll never marry, because she loves you.  Are you sorry for her?”