Several years passed in this manner. Dunyásha really did end by becoming used to her existence. The older Akím grew, the more attached he became to her, and the more he trusted her; her friends, who had married men not of the peasant class, suffered dire need, or were in distress, or had fallen into evil hands.... But Akím continued to wax richer and richer. He succeeded in everything--he was lucky; only one thing grieved him: God had not given him any children. Dunyásha was already in her twenty-fifth year; every one had come to call her Avdótya Aréfyevna.[40] Nevertheless, she had not become a good housewife.--But she had come to love her home, she attended to the stores of provisions, she looked after the servant-maids.... Truth to tell, she did all this in an indifferent way, and did not exercise the proper oversight as to cleanliness and order; but, on the other hand, in the principal room of the inn, alongside the portrait of Akím, hung her portrait, painted in oils and ordered by her from a home-bred artist, the son of the parish deacon.--She was represented in a white gown and a yellow shawl, with six rows of large pearls on her neck, long earrings in her ears, and rings on every finger... It was possible to recognise her,--although the painter had depicted her as extremely corpulent and rosy-cheeked, and had painted her eyes black instead of grey, and even a trifle squinting... He had not succeeded at all with Akím: the latter had, somehow, turned out very dark--_à la Rembrandt_,--so that a traveller would sometimes step up and stare at it, and merely bellow a bit. Avdótya had begun to dress with a good deal of carelessness; she would throw a large kerchief over her shoulders, and the gown under it would fit anyhow; indolence had taken possession of her, that sighing, languid, sleepy indolence to which Russians are but too greatly inclined, especially when their existence is assured..... Nevertheless, the affairs of Akím and his wife throve very well; they lived in concord, and bore the reputation of being an exemplary married pair. But, like the squirrel which is cleaning its nose at the very moment when the arrow is aimed at it, a man has no foreboding of his own disaster--and suddenly down he crashes, as though on the ice....