"Where can I hide before Thy countenance? Where can I flee before Thy wrath?"
His wife would sigh deeply and look at him, still more frightened, as if she expected something terrible. Olga blinked her blue eyes and suggested:
"In the forest."
"Where can I flee before Thy wrath?" he repeated.
This time I remember he took his hands from his pockets and twirled his long mustache, and his eyebrows trembled. He hid his hands and said:
"It was King David who asked, 'Where can I flee?' Yes, he was a king and he was afraid. You see that the devil was stronger than he. He was anointed of God and the devil conquered him. 'Where can I flee?' To hell—that is certain. We lesser people, we have nothing to hope for if the kings themselves go there."
He frequently returned to this subject. I did not always understand his words; nevertheless, they produced a disagreeable impression upon me.
People began to speak more and more about my piety. One day Titoff said to me:
"Pray zealously for my whole family, Matvei. I beg of you, pray for us. You will thus repay me for having gathered you to me and treated you like a son."
But what did that mean to me? My prayers were without object, like the song of a bird which he pours out to the sun. Nevertheless, I began to pray for him and for his family, and especially for little Olga, who had become a very pretty young girl, sweet and tender. I borrowed the words of the Psalms of David and all the other prayers which I knew. I liked to repeat the sing-song and cadenced phrases, but from the time when I said in praying for Titoff: "Lord, in Thy grace, have pity on Thy servant, Yegor," my heart closed. The spring of my prayers became dry, the serenity of my joys was disturbed. I was ashamed before God and could not continue. Lowering my eyes before the countenances of the holy saints I arose, overcome with a feeling of anger and embarrassment. It troubled me. Why should I feel like that? I tried to understand it, but could not, and I was sorry for the joy which had been destroyed on account of this man.