answered.

"How disgusting it all is, really!" he said softly, going up to his
table.

While hurriedly getting into my coat, I put up and lighted fresh
candles. He was sitting at the table, with feet stretched out on a
low chair, cutting a book.

I left him deeply engrossed, and the book did not drop out of his
hands as it had done in the evening.

VII

Now that I am writing these lines I am restrained by that dread of
appearing sentimental and ridiculous, in which I have been trained
from childhood; when I want to be affectionate or to say anything
tender, I don't know how to be natural. And it is that dread,
together with lack of practice, that prevents me from being able
to express with perfect clearness what was passing in my soul at
that time.

I was not in love with Zinaida Fyodorovna, but in the ordinary human
feeling I had for her, there was far more youth, freshness, and
joyousness than in Orlov's love.

As I worked in the morning, cleaning boots or sweeping the rooms,
I waited with a thrill at my heart for the moment when I should
hear her voice and her footsteps. To stand watching her as she drank
her coffee in the morning or ate her lunch, to hold her fur coat
for her in the hall, and to put the goloshes on her little feet
while she rested her hand on my shoulder; then to wait till the
hall porter rang up for me, to meet her at the door, cold, and rosy,
powdered with the snow, to listen to her brief exclamations about
the frost or the cabman--if only you knew how much all that meant
to me! I longed to be in love, to have a wife and child of my own.
I wanted my future wife to have just such a face, such a voice. I
dreamed of it at dinner, and in the street when I was sent on some
errand, and when I lay awake at night. Orlov rejected with disgust
children, cooking, copper saucepans, and feminine knicknacks and I
gathered them all up, tenderly cherished them in my dreams, loved
them, and begged them of destiny. I had visions of a wife, a nursery,
a little house with garden paths. . . .

I knew that if I did love her I could never dare hope for the miracle
of her returning my love, but that reflection did not worry me. In
my quiet, modest feeling akin to ordinary affection, there was no
jealousy of Orlov or even envy of him, since I realised that for a
wreck like me happiness was only to be found in dreams.

When Zinaida Fyodorovna sat up night after night for her _George_,
looking immovably at a b