sensible or stupid, what this love is leading up to, and so on. Whether
it is a good thing or not I don't know, but that it is in the way,
unsatisfactory, and irritating, I do know."

It looked as though he wanted to tell some story. People who lead a
solitary existence always have something in their hearts which they
are eager to talk about. In town bachelors visit the baths and the
restaurants on purpose to talk, and sometimes tell the most interesting
things to bath attendants and waiters; in the country, as a rule, they
unbosom themselves to their guests. Now from the window we could see
a grey sky, trees drenched in the rain; in such weather we could go
nowhere, and there was nothing for us to do but to tell stories and to
listen.

"I have lived at Sofino and been farming for a long time," Alehin began,
"ever since I left the University. I am an idle gentleman by education,
a studious person by disposition; but there was a big debt owing on the
estate when I came here, and as my father was in debt partly because
he had spent so much on my education, I resolved not to go away, but
to work till I paid off the debt. I made up my mind to this and set to
work, not, I must confess, without some repugnance. The land here does
not yield much, and if one is not to farm at a loss one must employ serf
labour or hired labourers, which is almost the same thing, or put it
on a peasant footing--that is, work the fields oneself and with one's
family. There is no middle path. But in those days I did not go into
such subtleties. I did not leave a clod of earth unturned; I gathered
together all the peasants, men and women, from the neighbouring
villages; the work went on at a tremendous pace. I myself ploughed and
sowed and reaped, and was bored doing it, and frowned with disgust, like
a village cat driven by hunger to eat cucumbers in the kitchen-garden.
My body ached, and I slept as I walked. At first it seemed to me that I
could easily reconcile this life of toil with my cultured habits; to do
so, I thought, all that is necessary is to maintain a certain external
order in life. I established myself upstairs here in the best rooms, and
ordered them to bring me there coffee and liquor after lunch and dinner,
and when I went to bed I read every night the _Yyesnik Evropi_. But
one day our priest, Father Ivan, came and drank up all my liquor at one
sitting; and the _Yyesnik Evropi_ went to the priest's daughters; as in
the summer, es