"You respect Christ, and yet you do not go to church."

Then more pictures appeared on the walls, and the number of books
increased on the shelves neatly made for him by one of his carpenter
friends. The room began to look like a home.

He addressed his mother with the reverential plural "you," and
called her "mother" instead of "mamma." But sometimes he turned
to her suddenly, and briefly used the simple and familiar form of
the singular: "Mamma, please be not thou disturbed if I come home
late to-night."

This pleased her; in such words she felt something serious and strong.

But her uneasiness increased. Since her son's strangeness was not
clarified with time, her heart became more and more sharply troubled
with a foreboding of something unusual. Every now and then she felt
a certain dissatisfaction with him, and she thought: "All people
are like people, and he is like a monk. He is so stern. It's not
according to his years." At other times she thought: "Maybe he
has become interested in some of a girl down there."

But to go about with girls, money is needed, and he gave almost
all his earnings to her.

Thus weeks and months elapsed; and imperceptibly two years slipped
by, two years of a strange, silent life, full of disquieting
thoughts and anxieties that kept continually increasing.

Once, when after supper Pavel drew the curtain over the window,