meal lay down for a nap in the verandah and snored so loudly that
the labourers shook their heads and said: "Well!"

Masha was not pleased at his coming, she did not trust him, though
at the same time she asked his advice. When, after sleeping too
long after dinner, he got up in a bad humour and said unpleasant
things about our management of the place, or expressed regret that
he had bought Dubetchnya, which had already been a loss to him,
poor Masha's face wore an expression of misery. She would complain
to him, and he would yawn and say that the peasants ought to be
flogged.

He called our marriage and our life a farce, and said it was a
caprice, a whim.

"She has done something of the sort before," he said about Masha.
"She once fancied herself a great opera singer and left me; I was
looking for her for two months, and, my dear soul, I spent a thousand
roubles on telegrams alone."

He no longer called me a dissenter or Mr. Painter, and did not as
in the past express approval of my living like a workman, but said:

"You are a strange person! You are not a normal person! I won't
venture to prophesy, but you will come to a bad end!"

And Masha slept badly at night, and was always sitting at our bedroom
window thinking. There was no laughter at supper now, no charming
grimaces. I was wretched, and when it rained, every drop that fell
seemed to pierce my heart, like small shot, and I felt ready to