“Olenka my dear, what is the matter?  Cross yourself.”

Her husband’s opinions were all hers.  If he thought the room was too hot, she thought so too.  If he thought business was dull, she thought business was dull.  Pustovalov was not fond of amusements and stayed home on holidays; she did the same.

“You are always either at home or in the office,” said her friends.  “Why don’t you go to the theatre or to the circus, darling?”

“Vasichka and I never go to the theatre,” she answered sedately.  “We have work to do, we have no time for nonsense.  What does one get out of going to theatre?”

On Saturdays she and Pustovalov went to vespers, and on holidays to early mass.  On returning home they walked side by side with rapt faces, an agreeable smell emanating from both of them and her silk dress rustling pleasantly.  At home they drank tea with milk-bread and various jams, and then ate pie.  Every day at noontime there was an appetising odour in the yard and outside the gate of cabbage soup, roast mutton, or duck; and, on fast days, of fish.  You couldn’t pass the gate without being seized by an acute desire to eat.  The samovar was always boiling on the office table, and customers were treated to tea and biscuits.  Once a week the married couple went to the baths and returned with red faces, walking side by side.

“We are getting along very well, thank God,” said Olenka to her friends.  “God grant that all should live as well as Vasichka and I.”

When Pustovalov went to the government of Mogilev to buy wood, she was dreadfully homesick for him, did not sleep nights, and cried.  Sometimes the veterinary surgeon of the regiment, Smirnov, a young man who lodged in the wing of her house, came to see her evenings.  He related incidents, or they played cards together.  This distracted her.  The most interesting of his stories were those of his own life.  He was married and had a son; but he had separated from his wife because she had deceived him, and now he hated her and sent her forty rubles a month for his son’s support.  Olenka sighed, shook her head, and was sorry for him.

“Well, the Lord keep you,” she said, as she saw him off to the door by candlelight.  “Thank you for coming to kill time with me.  May God give you health.  Mother in Heaven!” She spoke very sedately, very judiciously, imitating her husband.  The veterinary surgeon had disappeared behind the door when she called out after him:  “Do you know, Vladimir Platonych, you ought to make up with your wife.  Forgive her, if only for the sake of your son.  The child understands everything, you may be sure.”

When Pustovalov returned, she told him in a low voice about the veterinary surgeon and his unhappy family life; and they sighed and shook their heads, and talked about the boy who must be homesick for his father.  Then, by a strange association of ideas, they both stopped before the sacred images, made genuflections, and prayed to God to send them children.