huddled
together in their dismay. They were frightened, overwhelmed just as if a
convict had been caught in the house. What a shame! How awful! And this
was the family that had been fighting the prejudices and superstitions
of mankind all their lives; evidently they thought that all the
prejudices and superstitions of mankind were to be found in burning
three candles and in the number thirteen, or the unlucky day--Monday.

"I must request ... request ..." Mrs. Azhoguin kept on saying,
compressing her lips and accentuating the _quest_. "I must request you
to take her away."

XVIII

A little later my sister and I were walking along the street. I covered
her with the skirt of my overcoat; we hurried along through by-streets,
where there were no lamps, avoiding the passers-by, and it was like a
flight. She did not weep any more, but stared at me with dry eyes. It
was about twenty minutes' walk to Mikhokhov, whither I was taking her,
and in that short time we went over the whole of our lives, and talked
over everything, and considered the position and pondered....

We decided that we could not stay in the town, and that when I could get
some money, we would go to some other place. In some of the houses the
people were asleep already, and in others they were playing cards; we
hated those houses, were afraid of them, and we talked of the
fanaticism, callousness, and nullity of these respectable families,
these lovers of dramatic art whom we had frightened so much, and I
wondered how those stupid, cruel, slothful, dishonest people were better
than the drunken and superstitious peasants of Kurilovka, or how they
were better than animals, which also lose their heads when some accident
breaks the monotony of their lives, which are limited by their
instincts. What would happen to my sister if she stayed at home? What
moral torture would she have to undergo, talking to my father and
meeting acquaintances every day? I imagined it all and there came into
my memory people I had known who had been gradually dropped by their
friends and relations, and I remember the tortured dogs which had gone
mad, and sparrows plucked alive and thrown into the water--and a whole
long series of dull, protracted sufferings which I had seen going on in
the town since my childhood; and I could not conceive what the sixty
thousand inhabitants lived for, why they read the Bible, why they
prayed, why they skimmed books and magazines. What good was all