it could be seen from Dr.
Neshtchapov's face that the question had no interest for him whatever,
and that for long, long years he had read nothing and cared to read
nothing. Serious and expressionless, like a badly painted portrait,
for ever in his white waistcoat, he was silent and incomprehensible
as before; but the ladies, young and old, thought him interesting
and were enthusiastic over his manners. They envied Vera, who
appeared to attract him very much. And Vera always came away from
the visits with a feeling of vexation, vowing inwardly to remain
at home; but the day passed, the evening came, and she hurried off
to the works again, and it was like that almost all the winter.

She ordered books and magazines, and used to read them in her room.
And she read at night, lying in bed. When the clock in the corridor
struck two or three, and her temples were beginning to ache from
reading, she sat up in bed and thought, "What am I to do? Where am
I to go?" Accursed, importunate question, to which there were a
number of ready-made answers, and in reality no answer at all.

Oh, how noble, how holy, how picturesque it must be to serve the
people, to alleviate their sufferings, to enlighten them! But she,
Vera, did not know the people. And how could she go to them? They
were strange and uninteresting to her; she could not endure the
stuffy smell of the huts, the pot-house oaths, the unwashed children,
the women's talk of illnesses. To walk over the snow-drifts, to
feel cold, then to sit in a stifling hut, to teach children she
disliked--no, she would rather die! And to teach the peasants'
children while Auntie Dasha made money out of the pot-houses and
fined the peasants--it was too great a farce! What a lot of talk
there was of schools, of village libraries, of universal education;
but if all these engineers, these mine-owners and ladies of her
acquaintance, had not been hypocrites, and really had believed that
enlightenment was necessary, they would not have paid the schoolmasters
fifteen roubles a month as they did now, and would not have let
them go hungry. And the schools and the talk about ignorance--it
was all only to stifle the voice of conscience because they were
ashamed to own fifteen or thirty thousand acres and to be indifferent
to the peasants' lot. Here the ladies said about Dr. Neshtchapov
that he was a kind man and had built a school at the works. Yes,
he had built a school out of the old bricks at the wor