rvice free of charge.

I went on visiting them, but with less pleasure than before. The
engineer oppressed me and I felt cramped in his presence. I could not
endure his clear, innocent eyes; his opinions bored me and were
offensive to me, and I was distressed by the recollection that I had so
recently been subordinate to this ruddy, well-fed man, and that he had
been mercilessly rude to me. True he would put his arm round my waist
and clap me kindly on the shoulder and approve of my way of living, but
I felt that he despised my nullity just as much as before and only
suffered me to please his daughter, but I could no longer laugh and talk
easily, and I thought myself ill-mannered, and all the time was
expecting him to call me Panteley as he did his footman Pavel. How my
provincial, bourgeois pride rode up against him! I, a working man, a
painter, going every day to the house of rich strangers, whom the whole
town regarded as foreigners, and drinking their expensive wines and
outlandish dishes! I could not reconcile this with my conscience. When I
went to see them I sternly avoided those whom I met on the way, and
looked askance at them like a real sectarian, and when I left the
engineer's house I was ashamed of feeling so well-fed.

But chiefly I was afraid of falling in love. Whether walking in the
street, or working, or talking to my mates, I thought all the time of
going to Maria Victorovna's in the evening, and always had her voice,
her laughter, her movements with me. And always as I got ready to go to
her, I would stand for a long time in front of the cracked mirror tying
my necktie; my serge suit seemed horrible to me, and I suffered, but at
the same time, despised myself for feeling so small. When she called to
me from another room to say that she was not dressed yet and to ask me
to wait a bit, and I could hear her dressing, I was agitated and felt as
though the floor was sinking under me. And when I saw a woman in the
street, even at a distance, I fell to comparing her figure with hers,
and it seemed to me that all our women and girls were vulgar, absurdly
dressed, and without manners; and such comparisons roused in me a
feeling of pride; Maria Victorovna was better than all of them. And at
night I dreamed of her and myself.

Once at supper the engineer and I ate a whole lobster. When I reached
home I remember that the engineer had twice called me "my dear fellow,"
and I thought that they treated me as they