“What next! If I begin telling you anything you will go to sleep.”

“Me go to sleep? Allah forbid! Can I go to sleep while eyes like yours are watching me?”

In her husband’s words, and in the fact that he was lolling with his hat on the back of his head in the presence of a lady, there was nothing out of the way either. He was spoilt by women, knew that they found him attractive, and had adopted with them a special tone which everyone said suited him. With Lubotchka he behaved as with all women. But, all the same, Olga Mihalovna was jealous.

“Tell me, please,” said Lubotchka, after a brief silence⁠—“is it true that you are to be tried for something?”

“I? Yes, I am⁠ ⁠… numbered among the transgressors, my charmer.”

“But what for?”

When, at the end of the path, a thin wicker hurdle came into sight, and behind it podgy beehives with tiled roofs; when in the motionless, stagnant air there came a smell of hay and honey, and a soft buzzing of bees was audible, then the little creature would take complete possession of Olga Mihalovna. She used to sit down on a bench near the shanty woven of branches, and fall to thinking.