“Lord Jesus!” he said, waving his hands, “holy Saints!  I can’t officiate properly. . . .  Here you talk to me about the school, and I sit like a dummy and don’t understand a word, and think of nothing but food. . . .  Even before the altar. . . .  But . . . what am I doing?” Father Yakov pulled himself up suddenly.  “You want to go out.  Forgive me, I meant nothing. . . .  Excuse . . .”

Kunin shook hands with Father Yakov without speaking, saw him into the hall, and going back into his study, stood at the window.  He saw Father Yakov go out of the house, pull his wide-brimmed rusty-looking hat over his eyes, and slowly, bowing his head, as though ashamed of his outburst, walk along the road.

“I don’t see his horse,” thought Kunin.

Kunin did not dare to think that the priest had come on foot every day to see him; it was five or six miles to Sinkino, and the mud on the road was impassable.  Further on he saw the coachman Andrey and the boy Paramon, jumping over the puddles and splashing Father Yakov with mud, run up to him for his blessing.  Father Yakov took off his hat and slowly blessed Andrey, then blessed the boy and stroked his head.

Kunin passed his hand over his eyes, and it seemed to him that his hand was moist.  He walked away from the window and with dim eyes looked round the room in which he still seemed to hear the timid droning voice.  He glanced at the table.  Luckily, Father Yakov, in his haste, had forgotten to take the sermons.  Kunin rushed up to them, tore them into pieces, and with loathing thrust them under the table.

“And I did not know!” he moaned, sinking on to the sofa.  “After being here over a year as member of the Rural Board, Honorary Justice of the Peace, member of the School Committee!  Blind puppet, egregious idiot!  I must make haste and help them, I must make haste!”

He turned from side to side uneasily, pressed his temples and racked his brains.

“On the twentieth I shall get my salary, two hundred roubles. . . .  On some good pretext I will give him some, and some to the doctor’s wife. . . .  I will ask them to perform a special service here, and will get up an illness for the doctor. . . .  In that way I shan’t wound their pride.  And I’ll help Father Avraamy too. . . .”

He reckoned his money on his fingers, and was afraid to own to himself that those two hundred roubles would hardly be enough for him to pay his steward, his servants, the peasant who brought the meat. . . .  He could not help remembering the recent past when he was senselessly squandering his father’s fortune, when as a puppy of twenty he had given expensive fans to prostitutes, had paid ten roubles a day to Kuzma, his cab-driver, and in his vanity had made presents to actresses.  Oh, how useful those wasted rouble, three-rouble, ten-rouble notes would have been now!

“Father Avraamy lives on three roubles a month!” thought Kunin.  “For a rouble the priest’s wife could get herself a chemise, and the doctor’s wife could hire a washerwoman.  But I’ll help them, anyway!  I must help them.”