“Very well, father, enough,” he begged softly and sadly, turning aside from Mayakin. “Eh, you ought to get married as soon as possible!” exclaimed the old man with alarm. “For Christ’s sake, do not speak,” uttered Foma in a dull voice. Mayakin glanced at his godson and became silent. Foma’s face looked drawn; he grew pale, and there was a great deal of painful, bitter stupor in his half-open lips and in his sad look. On the right and on the left of the road a field stretched itself, covered here and there with patches of winter-raiment. Rooks were hopping busily about over the black spots, where the snow had melted. The water under the sledge-runners was splashing, the muddy snow was kicked up by the hoofs of the horses. “How foolish man is in his youth!” exclaimed Mayakin, in a low voice. Foma did not look at him. “Before him stands the stump of a tree, and yet he sees the snout of a beast--that’s how he frightens himself. Oh, oh!” “Speak more plainly,” said Foma, sternly. “What is there to say? The thing is clear: girls are cream; women are milk; women are near, girls are far. Consequently, go to Sonka, if you cannot do without it, and tell her plainly. That’s how the matter stands. Fool! If she is a sinner, you can get her more easily. Why are you so angry, then? Why so bristled up?” “You don’t understand,” said Foma, in a low voice. “What is it I do not understand? I understand everything!” “The heart. Man has a heart,” sighed the youth. Mayakin winked his eyes and said: “Then he has no mind.” CHAPTER VI WHEN Foma arrived in the city he was seized with sad, revengeful anger. He was burning with a passionate desire to insult Medinskaya, to abuse her. His teeth firmly set together, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, he walked for a few hours in succession about the deserted rooms of his house, he sternly knitted his brow, and constantly threw his chest forward. His breast was too narrow to hold his heart, which was filled with wrath. He stamped the floor with heavy and measured steps, as though he were forging his anger. “The vile wretch--disguised herself as an angel!” Pelageya vividly arose in his memory, and he whispered malignantly and bitterly: “Though a fallen woman, she is better. She did not play the hypocrite. She at once unfolded her soul and her body, and her heart is surely just as her breast--white and sound.” Sometimes Hope would whisper timidly in his ear: “Perhaps all that was said of her was a lie.” But he recalled the eager certainty of his godfather, and the power of his words, and this thought perished. He set his teeth more firmly together and threw his chest still more forward. Evil thoughts like splinters of wood stuck into his heart, and his heart was shattered by the acute pain they caused.