d
to exhaust himself, and he kept shaking his head, so that Aglaia
looked at him with wonder. He was afraid Matvey would come in, and
was certain that he would come in, and felt an anger against him
which he could overcome neither by prayer nor by continually bowing
down to the ground.

Matvey opened the door very softly and went into the prayer-room.

"It's a sin, such a sin!" he said reproachfully, and heaved a sigh.
"Repent! Think what you are doing, brother!"

Yakov Ivanitch, clenching his fists and not looking at him for fear
of striking him, went quickly out of the room. Feeling himself a
huge terrible wild beast, just as he had done before on the road,
he crossed the passage into the grey, dirty room, reeking with smoke
and fog, in which the peasants usually drank tea, and there he spent
a long time walking from one corner to the other, treading heavily,
so that the crockery jingled on the shelves and the tables shook.
It was clear to him now that he was himself dissatisfied with his
religion, ant could not pray as he used to do. He must repent, he
must think things over, reconsider, live and pray in some other
way. But how pray? And perhaps all this was a temptation of the
devil, and nothing of this was necessary? . . . How was it to be?
What was he to do? Who could guide him? What helplessness! He stopped
and, clutching at his head, began to think, but Matvey's being near
him prevented him from reflecting calmly. And he went rapidly into
the room.

Matvey was sitting in the kitchen before a bowl of potato, eating.
Close by, near the stove, Aglaia and Dashutka were sitting facing
one another, spinning yarn. Between the stove and the table at which
Matvey was sitting was stretched an ironing-board; on it stood a
cold iron.

"Sister," Matvey asked, "let me have a little oil!"

"Who eats oil on a day like this?" asked Aglaia.

"I am not a monk, sister, but a layman. And in my weak health I may
take not only oil but milk."

"Yes, at the factory you may have anything."

Aglaia took a bottle of Lenten oil from the shelf and banged it
angrily down before Matvey, with a malignant smile evidently pleased
that he was such a sinner.

"But I tell you, you can't eat oil!" shouted Yakov.

Aglaia and Dashutka started, but Matvey poured the oil into the
bowl and went on eating as though he had not heard.

"I tell you, you can't eat oil!" Yakov shouted still more loudly;
he turned red all over, snatched up the b