After supper someone downstairs began singing in a tenor voice.

“Why, nothing special has happened,” I tried to persuade myself. “Why am I so upset? I won’t go downstairs tomorrow, that’s all; and that will be the end of our quarrel.”

At a quarter past one I went to bed.

“Have the visitors downstairs gone?” I asked Alexey as he was undressing me.

“Yes, sir, they’ve gone.”

“And why were they shouting hurrah?”

“Alexey Dmitritch Mahonov subscribed for the famine fund a thousand bushels of flour and a thousand roubles. And the old lady⁠—I don’t know her name⁠—promised to set up a soup kitchen on her estate to feed a hundred and fifty people. Thank God⁠ ⁠… Natalya Gavrilovna has been pleased to arrange that all the gentry should assemble every Friday.”

“To assemble here, downstairs?”

“Yes, sir. Before supper they read a list: since August up to today Natalya Gavrilovna has collected eight thousand roubles, besides corn. Thank God.⁠ ⁠… What I think is that if our mistress does take trouble for the salvation of her soul, she will soon collect a lot. There are plenty of rich people here.”

Dismissing Alexey, I put out the light and drew the bedclothes over my head.

“After all, why am I so troubled?” I thought. “What force draws me to the starving peasants like a butterfly to a flame? I don’t know them, I don’t understand them; I have never seen them and I don’t like them. Why this uneasiness?”

I suddenly crossed myself under the quilt.