lked of how
to avoid the necessity for secrecy, for deception, for living in
different towns and not seeing each other for long at a time. How
could they be free from this intolerable bondage?

"How? How?" he asked, clutching his head. "How?"

And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be
found, and then a new and splendid life would begin; and it was
clear to both of them that they had still a long, long road before
them, and that the most complicated and difficult part of it was
only just beginning.

A DOCTOR'S VISIT

THE Professor received a telegram from the Lyalikovs' factory; he
was asked to come as quickly as possible. The daughter of some
Madame Lyalikov, apparently the owner of the factory, was ill, and
that was all that one could make out of the long, incoherent telegram.
And the Professor did not go himself, but sent instead his assistant,
Korolyov.

It was two stations from Moscow, and there was a drive of three
miles from the station. A carriage with three horses had been sent
to the station to meet Korolyov; the coachman wore a hat with a
peacock's feather on it, and answered every question in a loud voice
like a soldier: "No, sir!" "Certainly, sir!"

It was Saturday evening; the sun was setting, the workpeople were
coming in crowds from the factory to the station, and they bowed
to the carriage in which Korolyov was driving. And he was charmed
with the evening, the farmhouses and villas on the road, and the
birch-trees, and the quiet atmosphere all around, when the fields
and woods and the sun seemed preparing, like the workpeople now on
the eve of the holiday, to rest, and perhaps to pray. . . .

He was born and had grown up in Moscow; he did not know the country,
and he had never taken any interest in factories, or been inside
one, but he had happened to read about factories, and had been in
the houses of manufacturers and had talked to them; and whenever
he saw a factory far or near, he always thought how quiet and
peaceable it was outside, but within there was always sure to be
impenetrable ignorance and dull egoism on the side of the owners,
wearisome, unhealthy toil on the side of the workpeople, squabbling,
vermin, vodka. And now when the workpeople timidly and respectfully
made way for the carriage, in their faces, their caps, their walk,
he read physical impurity, drunkenness, nervous exhaustion,
bewilderment.

They drove in at the factory gates. On each side he ca