"There," he thought, "Anatol would have made a good spy. But Zimin wouldn't do at all. His eyes are in the way. You can recognize him by the eyes at once. He certainly wants to take Masha as his mistress."
Yevsey stopped at the door, his heart unpleasantly gripped by this conjecture. But the next instant he waved his hand carelessly.
"To the devil with all of them! What do I care?"
This thought, which had calmed him before, now irritated a sore spot in his feelings.
The sun was shining, water flowed from the roofs babbling and washing away the dirty reddish snow. The people walked quickly and merrily. The good chimes of the Lenten bells floated lengthily in the warm moist atmosphere, mingling in a broad ribbon of soft sounds, which waved in the air, and floated from the city into the pale bluish distance.
"Now to go off somewhere, to walk in the fields, in the deserts," thought Yevsey, as he entered the narrow streets of the factory suburb.
Round about him rose the red filthy walls, supporting themselves one against the other. The sky over them was besmirched with smoke, the air was steeped in the stifling odor of warm oil. White teeth gleamed angrily in the dirty faces of the workingmen. All the surroundings were unlovely, and the eyes quickly wearied in looking upon the smoked stone cages in which the men worked.
At noon Klimkov, exhausted and feeling insulted by everything he saw, entered a tavern, where he ordered dinner to be brought to him at a small table next to a window. He reluctantly listened to the people's conversation. There were not many, but all were workingmen, who lazily cast short words at one another as they ate and drank. The only lively sound was of a young incessant voice which reached him from a corner.
"No, think, where does wealth come from?"
The person who spoke was a broad-shouldered, curly-haired fellow. Yevsey looked at him in vexation, and turned away. He frequently heard talks about wealth, which always inspired him with a sense of bored perplexity. He felt they were dictated only by envy and greed. He knew that just such talks were accounted noxious, and he forcibly compelled himself to listen to them, though to-day he wanted to traverse the broad light streets of the city.