“Her eyes, the elegant refined hand she gave me, her indoor dress, the way she did her hair, her voice, her step, always produced the same impression on me of something new and extraordinary in my life, and very important.  We talked together for hours, were silent, thinking each our own thoughts, or she played for hours to me on the piano.  If there were no one at home I stayed and waited, talked to the nurse, played with the child, or lay on the sofa in the study and read; and when Anna Alexyevna came back I met her in the hall, took all her parcels from her, and for some reason I carried those parcels every time with as much love, with as much solemnity, as a boy.

“There is a proverb that if a peasant woman has no troubles she will buy a pig.  The Luganovitchs had no troubles, so they made friends with me.  If I did not come to the town I must be ill or something must have happened to me, and both of them were extremely anxious.  They were worried that I, an educated man with a knowledge of languages, should, instead of devoting myself to science or literary work, live in the country, rush round like a squirrel in a rage, work hard with never a penny to show for it.  They fancied that I was unhappy, and that I only talked, laughed, and ate to conceal my sufferings, and even at cheerful moments when I felt happy I was aware of their searching eyes fixed upon me.  They were particularly touching when I really was depressed, when I was being worried by some creditor or had not money enough to pay interest on the proper day.  The two of them, husband and wife, would whisper together at the window; then he would come to me and say with a grave face: 

“’If you really are in need of money at the moment, Pavel Konstantinovitch, my wife and I beg you not to hesitate to borrow from us.’

“And he would blush to his ears with emotion.  And it would happen that, after whispering in the same way at the window, he would come up to me, with red ears, and say: 

“‘My wife and I earnestly beg you to accept this present.’

“And he would give me studs, a cigar-case, or a lamp, and I would send them game, butter, and flowers from the country.  They both, by the way, had considerable means of their own.  In early days I often borrowed money, and was not very particular about it—­borrowed wherever I could—­but nothing in the world would have induced me to borrow from the Luganovitchs.  But why talk of it?

“I was unhappy.  At home, in the fields, in the barn, I thought of her; I tried to understand the mystery of a beautiful, intelligent young woman’s marrying some one so uninteresting, almost an old man (her husband was over forty), and having children by him; to understand the mystery of this uninteresting, good, simple-hearted man, who argued with such wearisome good sense, at balls and evening parties kept near the more solid people, looking listless and superfluous, with a submissive, uninterested expression, as though he had been brought there for sale, who yet believed in his right to be happy, to have children by her; and I kept trying to understand why she had met him first and not me, and why such a terrible mistake in our lives need have happened.