on the landing. "I
never do anything. Every day is a holiday for me, from morning till
night."

"What you say is inconceivable to me," he said, going up to her.
"I grew up in a world in which every one without exception, men and
women alike, worked hard every day."

"But if one has nothing to do?" she asked. "One has to arrange one's
life under such conditions, that work is inevitable. There can be
no clean and happy life without work."

Again he pressed the parasol to his bosom, and to his own surprise
spoke softly, in a voice unlike his own:

"If you would consent to be my wife I would give everything--I
would give everything. There's no price I would not pay, no sacrifice
I would not make."

She started and looked at him with wonder and alarm.

"What are you saying!" she brought out, turning pale. "It's impossible,
I assure you. Forgive me."

Then with the same rustle of her skirts she went up higher, and
vanished through the doorway.

Laptev grasped what this meant, and his mood was transformed,
completely, abruptly, as though a light in his soul had suddenly
been extinguished. Filled with the shame of a man humiliated, of a
man who is disdained, who is not liked, who is distasteful, perhaps
disgusting, who is shunned, he walked out of the house.

"I would give everything," he thought, mimicking himself as he went
home through the heat and recalled the details of his declaration.
"I would give everything--like a regular tradesman. As though she
wanted your _everything_!"

All he had just said seemed to him repulsively stupid. Why had he
lied, saying that he had grown up in a world where every one worked,
without exception? Why had he talked to her in a lecturing tone
about a clean and happy life? It was not clever, not interesting;
it was false--false in the Moscow style. But by degrees there
followed that mood of indifference into which criminals sink after
a severe sentence. He began thinking that, thank God! everything
was at an end and that the terrible uncertainty was over; that now
there was no need to spend whole days in anticipation, in pining,
in thinking always of the same thing. Now everything was clear; he
must give up all hope of personal happiness, live without desires,
without hopes, without dreams, or expectations, and to escape that
dreary sadness which he was so sick of trying to soothe, he could
busy himself with other people's affairs, other people's happiness,
and old age would co