quarters. The wives of
these gentlemen would come in--ugly, tastelessly dressed women,
as coarse as cooks--and gossip would begin in the flat as tasteless
and unattractive as the ladies themselves. Sometimes Modest Alexevitch
would take Anna to the theatre. In the intervals he would never let
her stir a step from his side, but walked about arm in arm with her
through the corridors and the foyer. When he bowed to some one, he
immediately whispered to Anna: "A civil councillor . . . visits at
His Excellency's"; or, "A man of means . . . has a house of his
own." When they passed the buffet Anna had a great longing for
something sweet; she was fond of chocolate and apple cakes, but she
had no money, and she did not like to ask her husband. He would
take a pear, pinch it with his fingers, and ask uncertainly:

"How much?"

"Twenty-five kopecks!"

"I say!" he would reply, and put it down; but as it was awkward to
leave the buffet without buying anything, he would order some
seltzer-water and drink the whole bottle himself, and tears would
come into his eyes. And Anna hated him at such times.

And suddenly flushing crimson, he would say to her rapidly:

"Bow to that old lady!"

"But I don't know her."

"No matter. That's the wife of the director of the local treasury!
Bow, I tell you," he would grumble insistently. "Your head won't
drop off."

Anna bowed and her head certainly did not drop off, but it was
agonizing. She did everything her husband wanted her to, and was
furious with herself for having let him deceive her like the veriest
idiot. She had only married him for his money, and yet she had less
money now than before her marriage. In old days her father would
sometimes give her twenty kopecks, but now she had not a farthing.

To take money by stealth or ask for it, she could not; she was
afraid of her husband, she trembled before him. She felt as though
she had been afraid of him for years. In her childhood the director
of the high school had always seemed the most impressive and
terrifying force in the world, sweeping down like a thunderstorm
or a steam-engine ready to crush her; another similar force of which
the whole family talked, and of which they were for some reason
afraid, was His Excellency; then there were a dozen others, less
formidable, and among them the teachers at the high school, with
shaven upper lips, stern, implacable; and now finally, there was
Modest Alexeitch, a man of principle, wh