“Yes, appalling,” Marya Konstantinovna went on.  “Any one could judge of your behaviour from the elaboration and gaudiness of your attire.  People laughed and shrugged their shoulders as they looked at you, and I grieved, I grieved. . . .  And forgive me, my dear; you are not nice in your person!  When we met in the bathing-place, you made me tremble.  Your outer clothing was decent enough, but your petticoat, your chemise. . . .  My dear, I blushed!  Poor Ivan Andreitch!  No one ever ties his cravat properly, and from his linen and his boots, poor fellow! one can see he has no one at home to look after him.  And he is always hungry, my darling, and of course, if there is no one at home to think of the samovar and the coffee, one is forced to spend half one’s salary at the pavilion.  And it’s simply awful, awful in your home!  No one else in the town has flies, but there’s no getting rid of them in your rooms:  all the plates and dishes are black with them.  If you look at the windows and the chairs, there’s nothing but dust, dead flies, and glasses. . . .  What do you want glasses standing about for?  And, my dear, the table’s not cleared till this time in the day.  And one’s ashamed to go into your bedroom:  underclothes flung about everywhere, india-rubber tubes hanging on the walls, pails and basins standing about. . . .  My dear!  A husband ought to know nothing, and his wife ought to be as neat as a little angel in his presence.  I wake up every morning before it is light, and wash my face with cold water that my Nikodim Alexandritch may not see me looking drowsy.”

“That’s all nonsense,” Nadyezhda Fyodorovna sobbed.  “If only I were happy, but I am so unhappy!”

“Yes, yes; you are very unhappy!” Marya Konstantinovna sighed, hardly able to restrain herself from weeping.  “And there’s terrible grief in store for you in the future!  A solitary old age, ill-health; and then you will have to answer at the dread judgment seat. . .  It’s awful, awful.  Now fate itself holds out to you a helping hand, and you madly thrust it from you.  Be married, make haste and be married!”

“Yes, we must, we must,” said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna; “but it’s impossible!”

“Why?”

“It’s impossible.  Oh, if only you knew!”

Nadyezhda Fyodorovna had an impulse to tell her about Kirilin, and how the evening before she had met handsome young Atchmianov at the harbour, and how the mad, ridiculous idea had occurred to her of cancelling her debt for three hundred; it had amused her very much, and she returned home late in the evening feeling that she had sold herself and was irrevocably lost.  She did not know herself how it had happened.  And she longed to swear to Marya Konstantinovna that she would certainly pay that debt, but sobs and shame prevented her from speaking.

“I am going away,” she said.  “Ivan Andreitch may stay, but I am going.”

“Where?”

“To Russia.”