periors or officers over me. . . . I'm my own superior.
And with all that I'm doing good to humanity!"

And after dinner he composed himself for a "rest." He usually slept
till the twilight of evening. But this time soon after dinner he
felt that some one was pulling at his leg. Some one kept laughing
and shouting his name. He opened his eyes and saw his friend Ukleikin,
the landscape painter, who had been away all the summer in the
Kostroma district.

"Bah!" he cried, delighted. "What do I see?"

There followed handshakes, questions.

"Well, have you brought anything? I suppose you've knocked off
hundreds of sketches?" said Yegor Savvitch, watching Ukleikin taking
his belongings out of his trunk.

"H'm! . . . Yes. I have done something. And how are you getting on?
Have you been painting anything?"

Yegor Savvitch dived behind the bed, and crimson in the face,
extracted a canvas in a frame covered with dust and spider webs.

"See here. . . . A girl at the window after parting from her
betrothed. In three sittings. Not nearly finished yet."

The picture represented Katya faintly outlined sitting at an open
window, from which could be seen a garden and lilac distance.
Ukleikin did not like the picture.

"H'm! . . . There is air and . . . and there is expression," he
said. "There's a feeling of distance, but . . . but that bush is
screaming . . . screaming horribly!"

The decanter was brought on to the scene.

Towards evening Kostyliov, also a promising beginner, an historical
painter, came in to see Yegor Savvitch. He was a friend staying at
the next villa, and was a man of five-and-thirty. He had long hair,
and wore a blouse with a Shakespeare collar, and had a dignified
manner. Seeing the vodka, he frowned, complained of his chest, but
yielding to his friends' entreaties, drank a glass.

"I've thought of a subject, my friends," he began, getting drunk.
"I want to paint some new . . . Herod or Clepentian, or some
blackguard of that description, you understand, and to contrast
with him the idea of Christianity. On the one side Rome, you
understand, and on the other Christianity. . . . I want to represent
the spirit, you understand? The spirit!"

And the widow downstairs shouted continually:

"Katya, give me the cucumbers! Go to Sidorov's and get some kvass,
you jade!"

Like wolves in a cage, the three friends kept pacing to and fro
from one end of the room to the other. They talked without ceasing,
ta