ds, he stared motionlessly into the face of his love, who
was floating far away from him together with the harbour and the shore.
Pelageya waved her handkerchief and smiled, but he knew that she was
crying, shedding many painful tears. From her tears the entire front
of Foma's shirt was wet, and from her tears, his heart, full of gloomy
alarm, was sad and cold. The figure of the woman was growing smaller
and smaller, as though melting away, and Foma, without lifting his eyes,
stared at her and felt that aside from fear for his father and sorrow
for the woman, some new, powerful and caustic sensation was awakening in
his soul. He could not name it, but it seemed to him as something like a
grudge against someone.

The crowd in the harbour blended into a close, dark and dead spot,
faceless, formless, motionless. Foma went away from the rail and began
to pace the deck gloomily.

The passengers, conversing aloud, seated themselves to drink tea; the
porters bustled about on the gallery, setting the tables; somewhere
below, on the stern, in the third class, a child was crying, a harmonica
was wailing, the cook was chopping something with knives, the dishes
were jarring--producing a rather harsh noise. Cutting the waves and
making foam, shuddering under the strain and sighing heavily, the
enormous steamer moved rapidly against the current. Foma looked at the
wide strip of broken, struggling, and enraged waves at the stern of the
steamer, and began to feel a wild desire to break or tear something;
also to go, breast foremost, against the current and to mass its
pressure against himself, against his breast and his shoulders.

"Fate!" said someone beside him in a hoarse and weary voice.

This word was familiar to him: his Aunt Anfisa had often used it as
an answer to his questions, and he had invested in this brief word a
conception of a power, similar to the power of God. He glanced at the
speakers: one of them was a gray little old man, with a kind face;
the other was younger, with big, weary eyes and with a little black
wedge-shaped beard. His big gristly nose and his yellow, sunken cheeks
reminded Foma of his godfather.

"Fate!" The old man repeated the exclamation of his interlocutor with
confidence, and began to smile. "Fate in life is like a fisherman on the
river: it throws a baited hook toward us into the tumult of our life and
we dart at it with greedy mouths. Then fate pulls up the rod--and the
man is struggling, f