As she said all this Pelagea laughed like a silly girl and looked up at Yegor's face. Her face
was simply radiant with happiness.
"Sit down? If you like . . ." said Yegor in a tone of indifference, and he chose a spot
between two fir-trees. "Why are you standing? You sit down too."
Pelagea sat a little way off in the sun and, ashamed of her joy, put her hand over her smiling
mouth. Two minutes passed in silence.
"You might come for once," said Pelagea.
"What for?" sighed Yegor, taking off his cap and wiping his red forehead with his hand.
"There is no object in my coming. To go for an hour or two is only waste of time, it's
simply upsetting you, and to live continually in the village my soul could not endure. . . .
You know yourself I am a pampered man. . . . I want a bed to sleep in, good tea to drink,
and refined conversation. . . . I want all the niceties, while you live in poverty and dirt in the
village. . . . I couldn't stand it for a day. Suppose there were an edict that I must live with
you, I should either set fire to the hut or lay hands on myself. From a boy I've had this love
for ease; there is no help for it."
"Where are you living now?"
"With the gentleman here, Dmitry Ivanitch, as a huntsman. I furnish his table with game,
but he keeps me . . . more for his pleasure than anything."
"That's not proper work you're doing, Yegor Vlassitch. . . . For other people it's a pastime,
but with you it's like a trade . . . like real work."
"You don't understand, you silly," said Yegor, gazing gloomily at the sky. "You have never
understood, and as long as you live you will never understand what sort of man I am. . . .
You think of me as a foolish man, gone to the bad, but to anyone who understands I am the
best shot there is in the whole district. The gentry feel that, and they have even printed
things about me in a magazine. There isn't a man to be compared with me as a sportsman. . .
. And it is not because I am pampered and proud that I look down upon your village work.
From my childhood, you know, I have never had any calling apart from guns and dogs. If
they took away my gun, I used to go out with the fishing-hook, if they took the hook I
caught things with my hands. And I went in for horse-dealing too, I used to go to the fairs
when I had the money, and you know that if a peasant goes in for being a sportsman, or a
horse-dealer, it's good-bye to the plough. Once the spirit of freedom has taken a man you
will never root it out of him. In the same way, if a gentleman goes in for being an actor or
for any other art, he will never make an official or a landowner. You are a woman, and you
do not understand, but one must understand that."
"I understand, Yegor Vlassitch."
"You don't understand if you are going to cry. . . ."
"I . . . I'm not crying," said Pelagea, turning away. "It's a sin, Yegor Vlassitch! You might