ution you? Good God!" Mayakin cried out,
clasping his hands. "So she has led you by the nose all winter long!
What a nose! What a beast she is!"

The old man was agitated; in his voice rang vexation, anger, even tears
Foma had never before seen him in such a state, and looking at him, he
was involuntarily silent.

"She will ruin you! Oh Lord! The Babylonian prostitute!"

Mayakin's eyes were blinking, his lips were trembling, and in rude,
cynical words he began to speak of Medinskaya, irritated, with a
wrathful jar in his voice.

Foma felt that the old man spoke the truth. He now began to breathe with
difficulty and he felt that his mouth had a dry, bitter taste.

"Very well, father, enough," he begged softly and sadly, turning aside
from Mayakin.

"Eh, you ought to get married as soon as possible!" exclaimed the old
man with alarm.

"For Christ's sake, do not speak," uttered Foma in a dull voice.

Mayakin glanced at his godson and became silent. Foma's face looked
drawn; he grew pale, and there was a great deal of painful, bitter
stupor in his half-open lips and in his sad look. On the right and on
the left of the road a field stretched itself, covered here and there
with patches of winter-raiment. Rooks were hopping busily about over
the black spots, where the snow had melted. The water under the
sledge-runners was splashing, the muddy snow was kicked up by the hoofs
of the horses.

"How foolish man is in his youth!" exclaimed Mayakin, in a low voice.
Foma did not look at him.

"Before him stands the stump of a tree, and yet he sees the snout of a
beast--that's how he frightens himself. Oh, oh!"

"Speak more plainly," said Foma, sternly.

"What is there to say? The thing is clear: girls are cream; women are
milk; women are near, girls are far. Consequently, go to Sonka, if
you cannot do without it, and tell her plainly. That's how the matter
stands. Fool! If she is a sinner, you can get her more easily. Why are
you so angry, then? Why so bristled up?"

"You don't understand," said Foma, in a low voice.

"What is it I do not understand? I understand everything!"

"The heart. Man has a heart," sighed the youth.

Mayakin winked his eyes and said:

"Then he has no mind."

CHAPTER VI

WHEN Foma arrived in the city he was seized with sad, revengeful anger.
He was burning with a passionate desire to insult Medinskaya, to abuse
her. His teeth firmly set together, his hands thrust deep into his
poc