As I worked in the morning, cleaning boots or sweeping the rooms, I waited with a thrill at my heart for the moment when I should hear her voice and her footsteps.  To stand watching her as she drank her coffee in the morning or ate her lunch, to hold her fur coat for her in the hall, and to put the goloshes on her little feet while she rested her hand on my shoulder; then to wait till the hall porter rang up for me, to meet her at the door, cold, and rosy, powdered with the snow, to listen to her brief exclamations about the frost or the cabman—­if only you knew how much all that meant to me!  I longed to be in love, to have a wife and child of my own.  I wanted my future wife to have just such a face, such a voice.  I dreamed of it at dinner, and in the street when I was sent on some errand, and when I lay awake at night.  Orlov rejected with disgust children, cooking, copper saucepans, and feminine knicknacks and I gathered them all up, tenderly cherished them in my dreams, loved them, and begged them of destiny.  I had visions of a wife, a nursery, a little house with garden paths. . . .

I knew that if I did love her I could never dare hope for the miracle of her returning my love, but that reflection did not worry me.  In my quiet, modest feeling akin to ordinary affection, there was no jealousy of Orlov or even envy of him, since I realised that for a wreck like me happiness was only to be found in dreams.

When Zinaida Fyodorovna sat up night after night for her George, looking immovably at a book of which she never turned a page, or when she shuddered and turned pale at Polya’s crossing the room, I suffered with her, and the idea occurred to me to lance this festering wound as quickly as possible by letting her know what was said here at supper on Thursdays; but—­how was it to be done?  More and more often I saw her tears.  For the first weeks she laughed and sang to herself, even when Orlov was not at home, but by the second month there was a mournful stillness in our flat broken only on Thursday evenings.

She flattered Orlov, and to wring from him a counterfeit smile or kiss, was ready to go on her knees to him, to fawn on him like a dog.  Even when her heart was heaviest, she could not resist glancing into a looking-glass if she passed one and straightening her hair.  It seemed strange to me that she could still take an interest in clothes and go into ecstasies over her purchases.  It did not seem in keeping with her genuine grief.  She paid attention to the fashions and ordered expensive dresses.  What for?  On whose account?  I particularly remember one dress which cost four hundred roubles.  To give four hundred roubles for an unnecessary, useless dress while women for their hard day’s work get only twenty kopecks a day without food, and the makers of Venice and Brussels lace are only paid half a franc a day on the supposition that they can earn the rest by immorality!  And it seemed strange to me that Zinaida Fyodorovna was not conscious of it; it vexed me.  But she had only to go out of the house for me to find excuses and explanations for everything, and to be waiting eagerly for the hall porter to ring for me.