side her walked a man also
returning from church, Vasily Pustovalov, the manager of the merchant
Babakayev's lumber-yard. He was wearing a straw hat, a white vest with
a gold chain, and looked more like a landowner than a business man.

"Everything has its ordained course, Olga Semyonovna," he said
sedately, with sympathy in his voice. "And if any one near and dear to
us dies, then it means it was God's will and we should remember that
and bear it with submission."

He took her to the wicket-gate, said good-bye and went away. After
that she heard his sedate voice the whole day; and on closing her eyes
she instantly had a vision of his dark beard. She took a great liking
to him. And evidently he had been impressed by her, too; for, not long
after, an elderly woman, a distant acquaintance, came in to have a cup
of coffee with her. As soon as the woman was seated at table she began
to speak about Pustovalov--how good he was, what a steady man, and any
woman could be glad to get him as a husband. Three days later
Pustovalov himself paid Olenka a visit. He stayed only about ten
minutes, and spoke little, but Olenka fell in love with him, fell in
love so desperately that she did not sleep the whole night and burned
as with fever. In the morning she sent for the elderly woman. Soon
after, Olenka and Pustovalov were engaged, and the wedding followed.

Pustovalov and Olenka lived happily together. He usually stayed in the
lumber-yard until dinner, then went out on business. In his absence
Olenka took his place in the office until evening, attending to the
book-keeping and despatching the orders.

"Lumber rises twenty per cent every year nowadays," she told her
customers and acquaintances. "Imagine, we used to buy wood from our
forests here. Now Vasichka has to go every year to the government of
Mogilev to get wood. And what a tax!" she exclaimed, covering her
cheeks with her hands in terror. "What a tax!"

She felt as if she had been dealing in lumber for ever so long, that
the most important and essential thing in life was lumber. There was
something touching and endearing in the way she pronounced the words,
"beam," "joist," "plank," "stave," "lath," "gun-carriage," "clamp." At
night she dreamed of whole mountains of boards and planks, long,
endless rows of wagons conveying the wood somewhere, far, far from the
city. She dreamed that a whole regiment of beams, 36 ft. x 5 in., were
advancing in an upright position to do ba