te. . . . Please don't
let anyone interrupt me. I can't write with children crying or cooks
snoring. . . . See, too, that there's tea and . . . steak or
something. . . . You know that I can't write without tea. . . . Tea
is the one thing that gives me the energy for my work."

Returning to his room he takes off his coat, waistcoat, and boots.
He does this very slowly; then, assuming an expression of injured
innocence, he sits down to his table.

There is nothing casual, nothing ordinary on his writing-table,
down to the veriest trifle everything bears the stamp of a stern,
deliberately planned programme. Little busts and photographs of
distinguished writers, heaps of rough manuscripts, a volume of
Byelinsky with a page turned down, part of a skull by way of an
ash-tray, a sheet of newspaper folded carelessly, but so that a
passage is uppermost, boldly marked in blue pencil with the word
"disgraceful." There are a dozen sharply-pointed pencils and several
penholders fitted with new nibs, put in readiness that no accidental
breaking of a pen may for a single second interrupt the flight of
his creative fancy.

Ivan Yegoritch throws himself back in his chair, and closing his
eyes concentrates himself on his subject. He hears his wife shuffling
about in her slippers and splitting shavings to heat the samovar.
She is hardly awake, that is apparent from the way the knife and
the lid of the samovar keep dropping from her hands. Soon the hissing
of the samovar and the spluttering of the frying meat reaches him.
His wife is still splitting shavings and rattling with the doors
and blowers of the stove.

All at once Ivan Yegoritch starts, opens frightened eyes, and begins
to sniff the air.

"Heavens! the stove is smoking!" he groans, grimacing with a face
of agony. "Smoking! That insufferable woman makes a point of trying
to poison me! How, in God's Name, am I to write in such surroundings,
kindly tell me that?"

He rushes into the kitchen and breaks into a theatrical wail. When
a little later, his wife, stepping cautiously on tiptoe, brings him
in a glass of tea, he is sitting in an easy chair as before with
his eyes closed, absorbed in his article. He does not stir, drums
lightly on his forehead with two fingers, and pretends he is not
aware of his wife's presence. . . . His face wears an expression
of injured innocence.

Like a girl who has been presented with a costly fan, he spends a
long time coquetting, grimacing,