ur desires; don't fall short of them."

"Can it be so hard to understand me?" Anna Akimovna asked with
amazement, and her eyes were bright with tears. "Understand, I have
an immense business on my hands--two thousand workmen, for whom
I must answer before God. The men who work for me grow blind and
deaf. I am afraid to go on like this; I am afraid! I am wretched,
and you have the cruelty to talk to me of negroes and . . . and you
smile!" Anna Akimovna brought her fist down on the table. "To go
on living the life I am living now, or to marry some one as idle
and incompetent as myself, would be a crime. I can't go on living
like this," she said hotly, "I cannot!"

"How handsome she is!" said Lysevitch, fascinated by her. "My God,
how handsome she is! But why are you angry, my dear? Perhaps I am
wrong; but surely you don't imagine that if, for the sake of ideas
for which I have the deepest respect, you renounce the joys of life
and lead a dreary existence, your workmen will be any the better
for it? Not a scrap! No, frivolity, frivolity!" he said decisively.
"It's essential for you; it's your duty to be frivolous and depraved!
Ponder that, my dear, ponder it."

Anna Akimovna was glad she had spoken out, and her spirits rose.
She was pleased she had spoken so well, and that her ideas were so
fine and just, and she was already convinced that if Pimenov, for
instance, loved her, she would marry him with pleasure.

Mishenka began to pour out champagne.

"You make me angry, Viktor Nikolaitch," she said, clinking glasses
with the lawyer. "It seems to me you give advice and know nothing
of life yourself. According to you, if a man be a mechanic or a
draughtsman, he is bound to be a peasant and an ignoramus! But they
are the cleverest people! Extraordinary people!"

"Your uncle and father . . . I knew them and respected them . . ."
Krylin said, pausing for emphasis (he had been sitting upright as
a post, and had been eating steadily the whole time), "were people
of considerable intelligence and . . . of lofty spiritual qualities."

"Oh, to be sure, we know all about their qualities," the lawyer
muttered, and asked permission to smoke.

When dinner was over Krylin was led away for a nap. Lysevitch
finished his cigar, and, staggering from repletion, followed Anna
Akimovna into her study. Cosy corners with photographs and fans on
the walls, and the inevitable pink or pale blue lanterns in the
middle of the ceiling, he did n