But there was a note of weakness, of good-nature in his voice, and no one was afraid of him.  After dinner he usually dressed in his best.  Pale, with a cut on his chin from shaving, craning his thin neck, he would stand for half an hour before the glass, prinking, combing his hair, twisting his black moustache, sprinkling himself with scent, tying his cravat in a bow; then he would put on his gloves and his top-hat, and go off to give his private lessons.  Or if it was a holiday he would stay at home and paint, or play the harmonium, which wheezed and growled; he would try to wrest from it pure harmonious sounds and would sing to it; or would storm at the boys: 

“Wretches!  Good-for-nothing boys!  You have spoiled the instrument!”

In the evening Anna’s husband played cards with his colleagues, who lived under the same roof in the government quarters.  The wives of these gentlemen would come in—­ugly, tastelessly dressed women, as coarse as cooks—­and gossip would begin in the flat as tasteless and unattractive as the ladies themselves.  Sometimes Modest Alexevitch would take Anna to the theatre.  In the intervals he would never let her stir a step from his side, but walked about arm in arm with her through the corridors and the foyer.  When he bowed to some one, he immediately whispered to Anna:  “A civil councillor . . . visits at His Excellency’s”; or, “A man of means . . . has a house of his own.”  When they passed the buffet Anna had a great longing for something sweet; she was fond of chocolate and apple cakes, but she had no money, and she did not like to ask her husband.  He would take a pear, pinch it with his fingers, and ask uncertainly: 

“How much?”

“Twenty-five kopecks!”

“I say!” he would reply, and put it down; but as it was awkward to leave the buffet without buying anything, he would order some seltzer-water and drink the whole bottle himself, and tears would come into his eyes.  And Anna hated him at such times.

And suddenly flushing crimson, he would say to her rapidly: 

“Bow to that old lady!”

“But I don’t know her.”

“No matter.  That’s the wife of the director of the local treasury!  Bow, I tell you,” he would grumble insistently.  “Your head won’t drop off.”

Anna bowed and her head certainly did not drop off, but it was agonizing.  She did everything her husband wanted her to, and was furious with herself for having let him deceive her like the veriest idiot.  She had only married him for his money, and yet she had less money now than before her marriage.  In old days her father would sometimes give her twenty kopecks, but now she had not a farthing.