ks for some
eight hundred roubles, and they sang the prayer for "long life" to
him when the building was opened, but there was no chance of his
giving up his shares, and it certainly never entered his head that
the peasants were human beings like himself, and that they, too,
needed university teaching, and not merely lessons in these wretched
schools.

And Vera felt full of anger against herself and every one else. She
took up a book again and tried to read it, but soon afterwards sat
down and thought again. To become a doctor? But to do that one must
pass an examination in Latin; besides, she had an invincible
repugnance to corpses and disease. It would be nice to become a
mechanic, a judge, a commander of a steamer, a scientist; to do
something into which she could put all her powers, physical and
spiritual, and to be tired out and sleep soundly at night; to give
up her life to something that would make her an interesting person,
able to attract interesting people, to love, to have a real family
of her own. . . . But what was she to do? How was she to begin?

One Sunday in Lent her aunt came into her room early in the morning
to fetch her umbrella. Vera was sitting up in bed clasping her head
in her hands, thinking.

"You ought to go to church, darling," said her aunt, "or people
will think you are not a believer."

Vera made no answer.

"I see you are dull, poor child," said Auntie Dasha, sinking on her
knees by the bedside; she adored Vera. "Tell me the truth, are you
bored?"

"Dreadfully."

"My beauty, my queen, I am your willing slave, I wish you nothing
but good and happiness. . . . Tell me, why don't you want to marry
Nestchapov? What more do you want, my child? You must forgive me,
darling; you can't pick and choose like this, we are not princes
. . . . Time is passing, you are not seventeen. . . . And I don't
understand it! He loves you, idolises you!"

"Oh, mercy!" said Vera with vexation. "How can I tell? He sits dumb
and never says a word."

"He's shy, darling. . . . He's afraid you'll refuse him!"

And when her aunt had gone away, Vera remained standing in the
middle of her room uncertain whether to dress or to go back to bed.
The bed was hateful; if one looked out of the window there were the
bare trees, the grey snow, the hateful jackdaws, the pigs that her
grandfather would eat. . . .

"Yes, after all, perhaps I'd better get married!" she thought.

III

For two days Auntie Dasha went