“You knew it would have to come sooner or later,” the student said. “You’re a good, fine person, and you’re nobody’s fool. You’ll understand.”
Anyuta put on her coat again. Silently she wrapped up her embroidery in a sheet of paper, gathered up needles and thread, and picked up the four lumps of sugar she had left by the window. These she put on the table next to his books.
“There’s your sugar,” she said softly, and turned away to hide her tears.
“Why are you crying?” Klochkov said.
He walked confusedly around the room, and said: “Really you are a strange woman. You knew yourself we would have to separate one day. We can’t live together forever.”
She had already bundled together all her belongings. She was turning to say good-by when he felt sorry for her.
Perhaps I could let her live here for another week, he thought. After all, she might as well stay. In another week I’ll tell her to go.
Annoyed by his own weakness, he shouted roughly: “What are you standing there for? If you are going, go! If you don’t want to go, take off your coat and stay! Stay if you want to!”
Slowly, silently, Anyuta removed her coat, then blew her nose very softly, sighed, and quietly returned to her familiar place on the stool by the window.
The student drew up his textbook to him, and once again he began to pace up and down the floor.
“The right lung consists of three lobes,” he read slowly. “The upper lobe on the anterior wall of the chest reaches the fourth or fifth rib …”
In the passageway someone was shouting at the top of his voice: “Gregory! The samovar!”
T
Valentin Petrovich Peredyorkin, a handsome young man, put on a frock coat, laced his patent-leather boots with their sharp toecaps, clapped an opera hat on his head, and then, hardly able to restrain his excitement, he drove off to the house of Princess Vera Zapiskina.
How sad, dear reader, that you have never met the Princess. She is a gentle and enchanting creature with soft heavenly-blue eyes and hair like a silken wave.
The waves of the sea break on rocks, but the waves of her hair, on the contrary, would shatter and crumble into dust the hardest stone. Only an insensitive nincompoop could resist her smile or the soft charms of her very small and perfectly formed bust. Only a blockhead could fail to register feelings of absolute joy when she speaks or smiles or shows her dazzling white teeth.
Peredyorkin was received.…
He sat down facing the Princess, and he was beside himself with excitement when he said: “Princess, would you listen to something I have to say?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Princess, forgive me. I don’t know where to begin. It will be so sudden for you … so extempore.… Promise me you won’t be angry.…”
He put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a handkerchief, and began to mop his face. All the while the Princess was smiling gently and gazing inquiringly at him.
“Princess!” he went on. “From the moment I set eyes on you, my soul … yes, my soul has been filled with unquenchable desires. These desires give me no peace during the day or during the night … and if these desires are to remain unfulfilled, I will be utterly miserable.…”
The Princess lowered her gaze meditatively.
Peredyorkin was silent for a moment, and went on: “Oh, my dear, it will come as a surprise to you.… You are above all earthly concerns, but … I regard you as the most suitable.…”
A silence followed.
“Most especially,” Peredyorkin sighed, “because our estates are contiguous.… I am rich.…”
“Yes, but what is all this about?” the Princess asked in a soft voice.
“What is it all about? Oh, Princess!” Peredyorkin exclaimed impetuously, rising to his feet. “I entreat you, do not refuse me.… Do not ruin my plans with your refusal. My dear, permit me to propose to you …”
Valentin Petrovich suddenly sat down, leaned over toward the Princess, and whispered: “I am making the most profitable proposal possible.… This way we shall be able to sell a million poods of tallow in a single year.… Let us start on our adjoining estates a limited liability company dedicated to tallow boiling!”
The Princess reflected for a moment, and then she said: “With great pleasure!”
The feminine reader, who expected a melodramatic ending, may relax.
V
NINE-YEAR-OLD Vanka Zhukov, who was apprenticed three months ago to the shoemaker Alyakhin, did not go to bed on Christmas Eve. He waited till the master and mistress and the more senior apprentices had gone to the
