herself, looking at her mother:

"Mother, everything is in God's hands."

And again she buried herself in her book.

Byelokurov came in his tunic and embroidered shirt. We played croquet
and tennis, then when it got dark, sat a long time over supper and
talked again about schools, and about Balagin, who had the whole
district under his thumb. As I went away from the Voltchaninovs
that evening, I carried away the impression of a long, long idle
day, with a melancholy consciousness that everything ends in this
world, however long it may be.

Genya saw us out to the gate, and perhaps because she had been with
me all day, from morning till night, I felt dull without her, and
that all that charming family were near and dear to me, and for the
first time that summer I had a yearning to paint.

"Tell me, why do you lead such a dreary, colourless life?" I asked
Byelokurov as I went home. "My life is dreary, difficult, and
monotonous because I am an artist, a strange person. From my earliest
days I've been wrung by envy, self-dissatisfaction, distrust in my
work. I'm always poor, I'm a wanderer, but you--you're a healthy,
normal man, a landowner, and a gentleman. Why do you live in such
an uninteresting way? Why do you get so little out of life? Why
haven't you, for instance, fallen in love with Lida or Genya?"

"You forget that I love another woman," answered Byelokurov.

He was referring to Liubov Ivanovna, the lady who shared the lodge
with him. Every day I saw this lady, very plump, rotund, and
dignified, not unlike a fat goose, walking about the garden, in the
Russian national dress and beads, always carrying a parasol; and
the servant was continually calling her in to dinner or to tea.
Three years before she had taken one of the lodges for a summer
holiday, and had settled down at Byelokurov's apparently forever.
She was ten years older than he was, and kept a sharp hand over
him, so much so that he had to ask her permission when he went out
of the house. She often sobbed in a deep masculine note, and then
I used to send word to her that if she did not leave off, I should
give up my rooms there; and she left off.

When we got home Byelokurov sat down on the sofa and frowned
thoughtfully, and I began walking up and down the room, conscious
of a soft emotion as though I were in love. I wanted to talk about
the Voltchaninovs.

"Lida could only fall in love with a member of the Zemstvo, as
devoted to schools and ho