He felt unbearably awkward as he listened to the somewhat rude yet kindly voice. He was afraid that after all the writer would abuse him and drive him out. "There, you see how strangely we meet this time, eh?" "Nothing else?" asked Yevsey confused. "Nothing else. But I believe you are tired. Sit down. Rest." "I must be going." "Very well. As you please. Well, thank you. Good-by." He extended his large hand with reddish wool on the fingers. Yevsey touched it cautiously. "Permit me also to tell you my life," he requested unexpectedly to himself. The instant he had distinctly uttered these words, he thought, "This is the very man to whom I ought to speak, if Timofey Vasilyevich himself, such a wise person and better than everybody, respects him." Recalling Maklakov, Yevsey looked at the window, and for a moment grew anxious. "No matter," he said to himself. "It's not the first time he's had to freeze." "Well, why not? Tell me, if you want to. Won't you take off your overcoat? And perhaps you will have a glass of tea. It's cold." Yevsey wanted to smile, but he restrained himself. In a few minutes, his eyes half closed, he told the writer monotonously and minutely about the village, about Yakov, and about the blacksmith. He spoke in the same voice in which he reported his observations in the Department of Safety. The writer, whom Yevsey observed from under his lashes, was sitting on a broad, heavy taborette, his elbows on the table, over which he bent, twirling his mustache with a quick movement of his fingers. His eyes gazed sharply and seriously into the distance above Klimkov's head. "He doesn't hear me," thought Yevsey, and raised his voice a little, continuing to examine the room without himself being observed, and jealously watching the face of the author. The room was dark and gloomy. The shelves crammed with books, which increased the thickness of the walls, apparently kept out the sounds of the street. Between the shelves the glass of the windows glistened dully, pasted over with the cold darkness of the night, and the white narrow stain of the door obtruded itself on the eye. In the middle of the room was a table, whose covering of grey cloth seemed to lend a dark grey tone to everything around it. Yevsey was ensconced in a corner of a chair covered with a smooth skin. For some reason he propped his head hard against its high back, then slid down a little. The flames of the candles disturbed him; the yellow tongues slowly inclining toward each other, seemed to be holding a conversation. They trembled, and straightened themselves out, struggling upward. Back of the author over the sofa, hung a large portrait, from which a yellow face with a sharp little beard looked out sternly.