"How she fell on me, as if she were starving!" he thought, in restless, painful doubt; and yet felt, too, a pleasing sense of gratified vanity. This was no "tradesman's darling," as he used to call Olympiada in his thoughts, but a woman, respected by all the world—an educated, pretty married woman.
"There must be something special about me," his vanity whispered to him. "It's too bad—too bad! But I'm not made of stone, and I couldn't turn her away."
He was young in fact, and his fancy was full of the woman's caresses. Besides his practical mind saw involuntarily several advantages that might arise from this new relationship. But close on the heels of these ideas, like a dark cloud, came other gloomy thoughts.
"Now I'm in a corner again. Did I want it? I respected her! I never had an evil thought about her; and now it's happened like this."
Then again, all the disturbance and contradiction in his soul was covered by the joyful thought that soon now his sheltered, clean life would begin. But to the end the painful, stabbing thought persisted:
"It would have been better without this."
He stayed in bed, pondering, till Avtonomov went to his duties. He heard the inspector say to his wife, smacking his lips:
"Let me have meat pasties for dinner, Tanya. Take a little more pork, and then just brown them a little, till they look like tiny little sucking pigs on the plate—you know; and just a little pepper with them, my dear, the way I like it. Then I'll bring you some marmalade, shall I?"
"Now, go along! go along! As if I didn't know what you like!" said his wife tenderly.
"And now, my darling, my little Tanya, give me one more kiss!"