But she looked at me all the more kindly. I was eighteen at this time, a well developed youth, with red curly hair and a pale face. I wanted to come nearer her, yet was embarrassed, for I was innocent before women then. The women in the village laughed at me for it, and it even seemed to me at times that Olga herself smiled at me in a queer way. More than once the enticing thought came to me: "There, that's my wife."
Day in, day out, I sat with her in the office in silence. When she asked me some questions about the business I answered, and in that lay our whole conversation.
She was slender and white, like a young birch, and her eyes were blue and thoughtful. To me she seemed pretty and tender in her quiet, mysterious wistfulness.
Once she asked me:
"What makes you so sad, Matvei?"
I had never spoken about myself with any one before, nor had ever wished to. But here suddenly my heart opened and I poured out all my misery to her. I told her of the shame of my birth, of the abuse that I suffered for it, and of the loneliness and wretchedness of my soul, and of her father. I told her everything. I did not do it to complain. It was only to unburden myself of my inmost thoughts, of which I had amassed quite a quantity—all worthless, I suppose.
"I had better enter a monastery," I ended.
She became depressed, hung her head and did not answer. I was pleased at her distress, but her silence hurt me. Three days later she said to me softly:
"It is wrong to watch people so much. Each one lives for himself. To be sure, now you are alone, but when you will have your own family, you will need no one and you will live like the rest, for yourself, in your own house and home. As for my father, don't judge him. I see that no one loves him, but I can't see wherein he is worse than the rest. Where does one see love anyway?"
Her words consoled me. I always did everything impetuously, and so here, too, I burst forth: