white paint."

I took him the white paint, and afterwards, when I let myself down
by the frail scaffolding, she looked at me, touched to tears and
smiling.

"What a dear you are!" she said.

I remembered from my childhood how a green parrot, belonging to one
of the rich men of the town, had escaped from its cage, and how for
quite a month afterwards the beautiful bird had haunted the town,
flying from garden to garden, homeless and solitary. Mariya Viktorovna
reminded me of that bird.

"There is positively nowhere for me to go now but the cemetery,"
she said to me with a laugh. "The town has become disgustingly dull.
At the Azhogins' they are still reciting, singing, lisping. I have
grown to detest them of late; your sister is an unsociable creature;
Mademoiselle Blagovo hates me for some reason. I don't care for the
theatre. Tell me where am I to go?"

When I went to see her I smelt of paint and turpentine, and my hands
were stained--and she liked that; she wanted me to come to her
in my ordinary working clothes; but in her drawing-room those clothes
made me feel awkward. I felt embarrassed, as though I were in
uniform, so I always put on my new serge trousers when I went to
her. And she did not like that.

"You must own you are not quite at home in your new character," she
said to me one day. "Your workman's dress does not feel natural to
you; you are awkward in it. Tell me, isn't that because you haven't
a firm conviction, and are not satisfied? The very kind of work you
have chosen--your painting--surely it does not satisfy you,
does it?" she asked, laughing. "I know paint makes things look nicer
and last longer, but those things belong to rich people who live
in towns, and after all they are luxuries. Besides, you have often
said yourself that everybody ought to get his bread by the work of
his own hands, yet you get money and not bread. Why shouldn't you
keep to the literal sense of your words? You ought to be getting
bread, that is, you ought to be ploughing, sowing, reaping, threshing,
or doing something which has a direct connection with agriculture,
for instance, looking after cows, digging, building huts of
logs. . . ."

She opened a pretty cupboard that stood near her writing-table, and
said:

"I am saying all this to you because I want to let you into my
secret. _Voila!_ This is my agricultural library. Here I have fields,
kitchen garden and orchard, and cattleyard and beehives. I read
them gre