kets, he walked for a few hours in succession about the deserted
rooms of his house, he sternly knitted his brow, and constantly threw
his chest forward. His breast was too narrow to hold his heart, which
was filled with wrath. He stamped the floor with heavy and measured
steps, as though he were forging his anger.

"The vile wretch--disguised herself as an angel!" Pelageya vividly arose
in his memory, and he whispered malignantly and bitterly:

"Though a fallen woman, she is better. She did not play the hypocrite.
She at once unfolded her soul and her body, and her heart is surely just
as her breast--white and sound."

Sometimes Hope would whisper timidly in his ear:

"Perhaps all that was said of her was a lie."

But he recalled the eager certainty of his godfather, and the power
of his words, and this thought perished. He set his teeth more firmly
together and threw his chest still more forward. Evil thoughts like
splinters of wood stuck into his heart, and his heart was shattered by
the acute pain they caused.

By disparaging Medinskaya, Mayakin made her more accessible to his
godson, and Foma soon understood this. A few days passed, and Foma's
agitated feelings became calm, absorbed by the spring business cares.
The sorrow for the loss of the individual deadened the spite he owed
the woman, and the thought of the woman's accessibility increased his
passion for her. And somehow, without perceiving it himself, he suddenly
understood and resolved that he ought to go up to Sophya Pavlovna and
tell her plainly, openly, just what he wanted of her--that's all! He
even felt a certain joy at this resolution, and he boldly started off to
Medinskaya, thinking on the way only how to tell her best all that was
necessary.

The servants of Medinskaya were accustomed to his visits, and to his
question whether the lady was at home the maid replied:

"Please go into the drawing-room. She is there alone."

He became somewhat frightened, but noticing in the mirror his stately
figure neatly clad with a frock-coat, and his swarthy, serious face in
a frame of a downy black beard, set with large dark eyes--he raised his
shoulders and confidently stepped forward through the parlour. Strange
sounds of a string instrument were calmly floating to meet him;
they seemed to burst into quiet, cheerless laughter, complaining of
something, tenderly stirring the heart, as though imploring it for
attention and having no hopes of getting it.