"Just so. What about?"

"You're queer!" said Lubov, looking at him with astonishment. "Can't you
see?"

"What?" asked Foma, sarcastically.

"What's the trouble with you?" said Lubov, looking at him uneasily.

"Eh, you!" drawled out Foma, with contemptuous pity. "Can your father,
can the merchant class beget anything good? Can you expect a radish to
bring forth raspberries? And you lied to me. Taras is this, Taras is
that. What is in him? A merchant, like the other merchants, and his
paunch is also that of the real merchant. He-he!" He was satisfied,
seeing that the girl, confused by his words, was biting her lips, now
flushing, now turning pale.

"You--you, Foma," she began, in a choking voice, and suddenly stamping
her foot, she cried:

"Don't you dare to speak to me!"

On reaching the threshold of the room, she turned her angry face to him,
and ejaculated in a low voice, emphatically:

"Oh, you malicious man!"

Foma burst into laughter. He did not feel like going to the table, where
three happy people were engaged in a lively conversation. He heard their
merry voices, their contented laughter, the rattle of the dishes, and he
understood that, with that burden on his heart, there was no place for
him beside them. Nor was there a place for him anywhere. If all people
only hated him, even as Lubov hated him now, he would feel more at ease
in their midst, he thought. Then he would know how to behave with them,
would find something to say to them. While now he could not understand
whether they were pitying him or whether they were laughing at him,
because he had lost his way and could not conform himself to anything.
As he stood awhile alone in the middle of the room, he unconsciously
resolved to leave this house where people were rejoicing and where he
was superfluous. On reaching the street, he felt himself offended by the
Mayakins. After all, they were the only people near to him in the world.
Before him arose his godfather's face, on which the wrinkles quivered
with agitation, and illuminated by the merry glitter of his green eyes,
seemed to beam with phosphoric light.

"Even a rotten trunk of a tree stands out in the dark!" reflected Foma,
savagely. Then he recalled the calm and serious face of Taras and beside
it the figure of Lubov bowing herself hastily toward him. That aroused
in him feelings of envy and sorrow.

"Who will look at me like that? There is not a soul to do it."

He came to himself fr