“Olga, one thing I beg you,” said the artist in an imploring voice, laying his hand on his heart—­“one thing; don’t worry me!  I want nothing else from you!”

“But swear that you love me still!”

“This is agony!” the artist hissed through his teeth, and he jumped up.  “It will end by my throwing myself in the Volga or going out of my mind!  Let me alone!”

“Come, kill me, kill me!” cried Olga Ivanovna.  “Kill me!”

She sobbed again, and went behind the screen.  There was a swish of rain on the straw thatch of the hut.  Ryabovsky clutched his head and strode up and down the hut; then with a resolute face, as though bent on proving something to somebody, put on his cap, slung his gun over his shoulder, and went out of the hut.

After he had gone, Olga Ivanovna lay a long time on the bed, crying.  At first she thought it would be a good thing to poison herself, so that when Ryabovsky came back he would find her dead; then her imagination carried her to her drawing-room, to her husband’s study, and she imagined herself sitting motionless beside Dymov and enjoying the physical peace and cleanliness, and in the evening sitting in the theatre, listening to Mazini.  And a yearning for civilization, for the noise and bustle of the town, for celebrated people sent a pang to her heart.  A peasant woman came into the hut and began in a leisurely way lighting the stove to get the dinner.  There was a smell of charcoal fumes, and the air was filled with bluish smoke.  The artists came in, in muddy high boots and with faces wet with rain, examined their sketches, and comforted themselves by saying that the Volga had its charms even in bad weather.  On the wall the cheap clock went “tic-tic-tic."...  The flies, feeling chilled, crowded round the ikon in the corner, buzzing, and one could hear the cockroaches scurrying about among the thick portfolios under the seats....

Ryabovsky came home as the sun was setting.  He flung his cap on the table, and, without removing his muddy boots, sank pale and exhausted on the bench and closed his eyes.

“I am tired...” he said, and twitched his eyebrows, trying to raise his eyelids.

To be nice to him and to show she was not cross, Olga Ivanovna went up to him, gave him a silent kiss, and passed the comb through his fair hair.  She meant to comb it for him.

“What’s that?” he said, starting as though something cold had touched him, and he opened his eyes.  “What is it?  Please let me alone.”

He thrust her off, and moved away.  And it seemed to her that there was a look of aversion and annoyance on his face.

At that time the peasant woman cautiously carried him, in both hands, a plate of cabbage-soup.  And Olga Ivanovna saw how she wetted her fat fingers in it.  And the dirty peasant woman, standing with her body thrust forward, and the cabbage-soup which Ryabovsky began eating greedily, and the hut, and their whole way of life, which she at first had so loved for its simplicity and artistic disorder, seemed horrible to her now.  She suddenly felt insulted, and said coldly: