"Six times I went to see her. You can't understand what it was like! I might have gone to her flat six more times, but I could not make up my mind to it. I could not! Now she has gone away." He laid his hands on the table, and in a whisper, moving his fingers, said: "God grant I never meet her again! God grant it! Then it would be going to the devil! Let us go home. Come!" We went. He staggered along, muttering: "That's how it is, Brother." I was not surprised by the story he had told me; I had long ago guessed that something unusual had happened to him. But I was greatly depressed by what he had said about life, and more by what he had said about Osip. CHAPTER XX I lived three years as overseer in that dead town, amid empty buildings, watching the workmen pull down clumsy stone shops in the autumn, and rebuild them in the same way in the spring. The master took great care that I should earn his five rubles. If the floor of a shop had to be laid again, I had to remove earth from the whole area to the depth of one arshin. The dock laborers were paid a ruble for this work, but I received nothing; and while I was thus occupied, I had no time to look after the carpenters, who unscrewed the locks and handles from the doors and committed petty thefts of all kinds. Both the workmen and the contractors tried in every way to cheat me, to steal something, and they did it almost openly, as if they were performing an unpleasant duty; were not in the least indignant when I accused them, but were merely amazed. "You make as much fuss over five rubles as you would over twenty. It is funny to hear you!" I pointed out to my master that, while he saved one ruble by my labor, he lost ten times more in this way, but he merely blinked at me and said: "That will do! You are making that up!" I understood that he suspected me of conniving at the thefts, which aroused in me a feeling of repulsion towards him, but I was not offended. In that class of life they all steal, and even the master liked to take what did not belong to him. When, after the fair, he looked into one of the shops which he was to rebuild, and saw a forgotten samovar, a piece of crockery, a carpet, or a pair of scissors which had been forgotten, even sometimes a case, or some merchandise, my master would say, smiling: "Make a list of the things and take them all to the store-room." And he would take them home with him from the store-room, telling me sometimes to cross them off the list.