“I tell you what,” said Anna, who had for a long while been exchanging wary glances with Vronsky, and knew that he was not in the least interested in the education of this artist, but was simply absorbed by the idea of assisting him, and ordering a portrait of him; “I tell you what,” she said, resolutely interrupting Golenishtchev, who was still talking away, “let’s go and see him!”

Golenishtchev recovered his self-possession and readily agreed.  But as the artist lived in a remote suburb, it was decided to take the carriage.

An hour later Anna, with Golenishtchev by her side and Vronsky on the front seat of the carriage, facing them, drove up to a new ugly house in the remote suburb.  On learning from the porter’s wife, who came out to them, that Mihailov saw visitors at his studio, but that at that moment he was in his lodging only a couple of steps off, they sent her to him with their cards, asking permission to see his picture.

Chapter 10

The artist Mihailov was, as always, at work when the cards of Count Vronsky and Golenishtchev were brought to him.  In the morning he had been working in his studio at his big picture.  On getting home he flew into a rage with his wife for not having managed to put off the landlady, who had been asking for money.

“I’ve said it to you twenty times, don’t enter into details.  You’re fool enough at all times, and when you start explaining things in Italian you’re a fool three times as foolish,” he said after a long dispute.

“Don’t let it run so long; it’s not my fault.  If I had the money...”

“Leave me in peace, for God’s sake!” Mihailov shrieked, with tears in his voice, and, stopping his ears, he went off into his working room, the other side of a partition wall, and closed the door after him.  “Idiotic woman!” he said to himself, sat down to the table, and, opening a portfolio, he set to work at once with peculiar fervor at a sketch he had begun.

Never did he work with such fervor and success as when things went ill with him, and especially when he quarreled with his wife.  “Oh! damn them all!” he thought as he went on working.  He was making a sketch for the figure of a man in a violent rage.  A sketch had been made before, but he was dissatisfied with it.  “No, that one was better...where is it?” He went back to his wife, and scowling, and not looking at her, asked his eldest little girl, where was that piece of paper he had given them?  The paper with the discarded sketch on it was found, but it was dirty, and spotted with candle-grease.  Still, he took the sketch, laid it on his table, and, moving a little away, screwing up his eyes, he fell to gazing at it.  All at once he smiled and gesticulated gleefully.

“That’s it! that’s it!” he said, and, at once picking up the pencil, he began rapidly drawing.  The spot of tallow had given the man a new pose.