“I would gladly go, if I were not so stout.”
“How can your vow be eased?” said Father Vassili, thinking aloud. “What do you live on?”
“On tea, coffee, mushroom soup, potatoes....”
“Do you like coffee?”
“Yes, Little Father.”
“Abstain from coffee.”
“That is nearly as bad,” she sighed, “as going to Kiev. What am I to live on?”
“On meat.”
It seemed to her that he was laughing, and indeed he did laugh when he saw her face.
“You don’t like it,” he said. “But make the sacrifice.”