of us. Masha had
her hand on my arm. We were at peace and there was no need to talk of
love; after the wedding we grew closer to each other and dearer, and it
seemed as though nothing could part us.

"Your sister is a dear, lovable creature," said Masha, "but looks as
though she had lived in torture. Your father must be a terrible man."

I began to tell her how my sister and I had been brought up and how
absurd and full of torture our childhood had been. When she heard that
my father had thrashed me quite recently she shuddered and clung to me:

"Don't tell me any more," she said. "It is too horrible."

And now she did not leave me. We lived in the big house, in three rooms,
and in the evenings we bolted the door that led to the empty part of the
house, as though some one lived there whom we did not know and feared. I
used to get up early, at dawn, and begin working. I repaired the carts;
made paths in the garden, dug the beds, painted the roofs. When the time
came to sow oats, I tried to plough and harrow, and sow and did it all
conscientiously, and did not leave it all to the labourer. I used to get
tired, and my face and feet used to burn with the rain and the sharp
cold wind. But work in the fields did not attract me. I knew nothing
about agriculture and did not like it; perhaps because my ancestors were
not tillers of the soil and pure town blood ran in my veins. I loved
nature dearly; I loved the fields and the meadows and the garden, but
the peasant who turns the earth with his plough, shouting at his
miserable horse, ragged and wet, with bowed shoulders, was to me an
expression of wild, rude, ugly force, and as I watched his clumsy
movements I could not help thinking of the long-passed legendary life,
when men did not yet know the use of fire. The fierce bull which led the
herd, and the horses that stampeded through the village, filled me with
terror, and all the large creatures, strong and hostile, a ram with
horns, a gander, or a watch-dog seemed to me to be symbolical of some
rough, wild force. These prejudices used to be particularly strong in me
in bad weather, when heavy clouds hung over the black plough-lands. But
worst of all was that when I was ploughing or sowing, and a few peasants
stood and watched how I did it, I no longer felt the inevitability and
necessity of the work and it seemed to me that I was trifling my time
away.

I used to go through the gardens and the meadow to the mill. It was