On her bed behind the partition, pulling at her pretty hair, sat Olga Ivanovna; and pictured herself at home, first in the drawing-room, then in her bedroom, then in her hus- band's study; imagination bore her to theatres, to her dress- maker, to her friends. What was Dymov doing now? Did he think of her? The season had already begun; it was time to think of the evening parties. And Dymov? Dear Dymovl How kindly, with what infantile complaints, he begged her in his letters to come home! Every month he sent her seventy-five rubles, and when she wrote that she had bor- rowed a hundred from the artists he sent her also that hun- dred. The good, the generous man! Olga Ivanovna was tired of the tour; she suffered from tedium, and wishfcd to escape as soon as possible from the muzhiks, from the river damp, from the feeling of physical uncleanliness caused by living in huts and wandering from village to village. Had Riabovsky not promised his brother artists to stay till the twentieth of September, they might have left at once. And how good it would be to leave!
"My God!" groaned Riabovsky. "Will the sun ever come out? I cannot paint a landscape without the sun!"
"But your study of a cloudy sky?" said Olga Ivanovna, coming from behind the partition. "You remember, the one with the trees in the foreground to the right, and the cows and geese at the left. You could finish that."
"What?" The artist frowned. "Finish it? Do you really think I'm so stupid that I don't know what to do?"
"What I do think is that you've changed to me!" sighed Olga Ivanovna.
"Yes; and that's all right."
Olga Ivanovna's face quivered; she went to the stove and began to cry.
"We only wanted tears to complete the picture! Do stop! I have a thousand reasons for crying, but I don't cry."
"A thousand reasons!" burst out Olga Ivanovna. "The chief reason is that you are tired of me. Yes!" She began to sob. "I will tell you the truth: you are ashamed of your love. You try to hide it, to prevent the others noticing, but that is useless, because they knew about it long ago."
"Olga, I ask only one thing," said the artist imploringly. He put his hand to his ear. "One thing only; do not torture me! I want nothing more from you!"
"Then swear to me that you love me still!"
"This is torture!" hissed Riabovsky through his teeth. He jumped up. "It will end in my throwing myself into the Volga, or going out of my mind. Leave me alone!"
"Then kill me! Kill me!" cried Olga Ivanovna. "Kill me!"
She again sobbed, and retired behind the partition. Rain- drops pattered on the cabin roof. Riabovsky with his hands to his head walked from corner to corner; then with a de- termined face, as if he wanted to prove something, put on his cap, took his gun, and went out of the hut.
When he left, Olga Ivanovna lay on her bed and cried, At first she thought that it would be good to take poison, so that Riabovsky on his return would find her dead. But soon her thoughts bore her back to the drawing-room and to her husband's study; and she fancied herself sitting quietly beside Dymov, enjoying physical rest and cleanliness; and spending the evening listening to Cavalleria Rusticana. And a yearning for civilisation, for the sound of cities, for celebri- ties filled her heart. A peasant woman entered the hut, and lazily prepared the stove for dinner. There was a smell of soot, and the air turned blue from smoke. Then in came several artists in muddy top boots, their faces wet with rain; and they looked at the drawings, and consoled them- selves by saying that even in bad weather the Volga had its especial charm. The cheap clock on the wall ticked away; half-frozen flies swarmed in the ikon-corner and buzzed; and cockroaches could be heard under the benches.
Riabovsky returned at sunset. He flung his cap on the table, and, pale, tired, and muddy, dropped on a bench and shut his eyes.
"I am tired," he said, and wrinkled his brows, trying to open his eyes.
To show him kindness, and prove that her anger had passed, Olga Ivanovna came up to him, kissed him silently, and drew a comb through his long, fair hair.
"What are you doing?" he asked, starting as if something cold had touched him. He opened his eyes. "What are you doing? Leave me alone, I beg of you!"
He repulsed her with both hands; and his face seemed to express repugnance and vexation. The peasant woman cau- tiously brought him a plate, and Olga Ivanovna noticed how she stuck her big fingers in the soup. And the dirty peasant woman with her pendent stomach, the soup which Riabovsky ate greedily, the hut, which she had loved at first for its plainness and artistic disorder, seemed to her un- bearable. She felt a deep sense of offence, and said coldly—
"We must part for a time, otherwise we'll only quarrel seriously out of sheer tedium. I am tired of this. I am going to-day."
"Going, how? On the steamer?"
"To-day is Thursday—there is a steamer at half-past bine."
"Eh? Yes! . . . All right, go," said Riabovsky softly, using a towel for a table-napkin. "It's tiresome here for you, and there's nothing to do. Only a great egoist would
try to keep you. Go . . . we will meet after the twentieth."
Olga Ivanovna, in good spirits, packed her clothes. Her cheeks burnt with pleasure. "Is it possible?" she asked her- self. "Is it possible I shall soon paint in the drawing-room and sleep in a bedroom and dine off a tablecloth?" Her heart grew lighter, and her anger with the artist disappeared.
"I'll leave you the colours and brushes, Riabusha,'' she said. "You'll bring everything. . . . And, mind, don't idle when I am gone; don't sulk, but work. You are my boy, Riabusha!"
At ten o'clock Riabovsky kissed her good-bye in the hut, to avoid—as she saw—kissing her on the landing-stage in the presence of others. Soon afterwards the steamer arrived and took her away.
Two and a half days later she reached home. Still in her hat and waterproof cloak, panting with excitement, she went through the drawing-room into the dining-room. In his shirt- sleeves, with unbuttoned waistcoat, Dymov sat at the table and sharpened a knife; on a plate before him was a grouse. As Olga Ivanovna entered the house she resolved to hide the truth from her husband, and felt that she was clever and strong enough to succeed. But when she saw his broad, kindly, happy smile and his bright, joyful eyes, she felt that to deceive such a man would be base and impossible, as im- possible as to slander, steal, or kill; and she made up her mind in a second to tell him the whole story. When he had kissed and embraced her she fell upon her knees and hid her face.
"What? What is it, mama?" he asked tenderly. "You got tired of it?"
She raised her face, red with shame, and looked at him guiltily and implc:ingly. But fear and shame forbade her to tell the truth.
"It is nothing," she said. "I only . . ."
"Sit down here!" he said, lifting her and seating her at the table. "There we are! E'lt the grouse! You are starving, "ilf course, poor child! "
She breathed in greedily her native air and ate the g1ouse. 1\nd Dymov looked at her with rapture and smiled merrily.
vi
Apparentlv about the middle of winter Dymov first sus- pected his wife's unfaithfulness. He behaved as if his own conscience reproached him. He no longer looked her straight in the face; no longer smiled radiantly when she came in .sight; and, to avoid being alone with her, often brought home to dinner, his colleague, Korostelev, a little short-haired man, with a crushed face, who showed his confusior. in Olga Iva- 'lovna's society by buttoning and unbuttoning his coat and ,)inching his right moustache. During dinner the doctors said that when the diaphragm rises abnormally high the heart sometimes beats irregularly, that neuritis had greatly in- -:reased, and they discussed Dymov's discovery made dur- lng dissection that a case of cancer of the pancreas had been wrongly diagnosed as "malignant anremia." And it was plain Ihat both men spoke only of medicine in order that Olga Ivanovna might be silent and tell no lies. After dinner, Korostelev sat at the piano, and Dymov sighed and said to tim—