“We must part for a time, or else from boredom we shall quarrel in earnest.  I am sick of this; I am going today.”

“Going how?  Astride on a broomstick?”

“Today is Thursday, so the steamer will be here at half-past nine.”

“Eh?  Yes, yes....  Well, go, then...”  Ryabovsky said softly, wiping his mouth with a towel instead of a dinner napkin.  “You are dull and have nothing to do here, and one would have to be a great egoist to try and keep you.  Go home, and we shall meet again after the twentieth.”

Olga Ivanovna packed in good spirits.  Her cheeks positively glowed with pleasure.  Could it really be true, she asked herself, that she would soon be writing in her drawing-room and sleeping in her bedroom, and dining with a cloth on the table?  A weight was lifted from her heart, and she no longer felt angry with the artist.

“My paints and brushes I will leave with you, Ryabovsky,” she said.  “You can bring what’s left....  Mind, now, don’t be lazy here when I am gone; don’t mope, but work.  You are such a splendid fellow, Ryabovsky!”

At ten o’clock Ryabovsky gave her a farewell kiss, in order, as she thought, to avoid kissing her on the steamer before the artists, and went with her to the landing-stage.  The steamer soon came up and carried her away.

She arrived home two and a half days later.  Breathless with excitement, she went, without taking off her hat or waterproof, into the drawing-room and thence into the dining-room.  Dymov, with his waistcoat unbuttoned and no coat, was sitting at the table sharpening a knife on a fork; before him lay a grouse on a plate.  As Olga Ivanovna went into the flat she was convinced that it was essential to hide everything from her husband, and that she would have the strength and skill to do so; but now, when she saw his broad, mild, happy smile, and shining, joyful eyes, she felt that to deceive this man was as vile, as revolting, and as impossible and out of her power as to bear false witness, to steal, or to kill, and in a flash she resolved to tell him all that had happened.  Letting him kiss and embrace her, she sank down on her knees before him and hid her face.

“What is it, what is it, little mother?” he asked tenderly.  “Were you homesick?”

She raised her face, red with shame, and gazed at him with a guilty and imploring look, but fear and shame prevented her from telling him the truth.

“Nothing,” she said; “it’s just nothing....”

“Let us sit down,” he said, raising her and seating her at the table.  “That’s right, eat the grouse.  You are starving, poor darling.”

She eagerly breathed in the atmosphere of home and ate the grouse, while he watched her with tenderness and laughed with delight.

VI