He went quickly from the shop and in the doorway, for some reason, took off his cap. Ilya sprang from behind the counter after him, but already Gratschev was away down the street, holding his cap in his hand, and shaking it excitedly. "Pavel!" cried Ilya. "Stop!" He did not stop, nor turn round once, but turned into a side street, and disappeared. Ilya turned slowly back and felt his face burn with the words of his friend as though he had looked into a hot oven. "How angry he was!" said Gavrik. Ilya smiled. "Whose throat did he want to cut?" asked the boy, and came up to the counter. He held his hands behind his back, his head thrown up, and his coarse face was red with excitement. "His wife," said Ilya. Gavrik was silent for a moment, then he wrinkled his forehead and said softly and thoughtfully to his master: "There was a woman near us poisoned her husband last Christmas with arsenic, because he was always drinking." "It does happen," said Lunev slowly, thinking of Pavel. "But this man, will he really kill her?" "Go away now, Gavrik." The boy turned round and went to the door murmuring: "Marry! O Lord!" The dusk of twilight filled the streets and lights appeared in the windows opposite. "It's time to shut up," said Gavrik quietly. Ilya looked at the lighted windows. Below they were decked with flowers and above with white curtains. Between the flowers, golden frames could be seen on the walls within. When the windows were opened, sounds of song and guitar and loud laughter poured into the street. There was singing and music and laughter in this house almost every evening. Lunev knew that a man, Gromov, lived there, of the district court of justice, a fat, red-cheeked man, with a big, black moustache. His wife was stout, too, fair-haired, with little friendly blue eyes; she went proudly along the street like the queen in a fairy tale, but if she was talking to any one, she smiled all the time. Gromov had an unmarried sister, a tall, brown-skinned and black-haired girl, a crowd of young officials courted her; they all assembled at Gromov's almost every evening and laughed and sang. Gromov's cook bought thread of Ilya, complained of her employers, and said that they fed their servants badly and were always behindhand with their wages, and Lunev thought: "There--there are people who live well." "Really it is time to shut up," persisted Gavrik. "Shut up then." The boy closed the door and the shop grew dark; there was a noise as the key turned in the lock. "Like a prison," thought Ilya. The insulting words of his friend about his well fed condition stabbed his heart like splinters. As he sat by the samovar he thought angrily of Pavel, but did not believe he could murder Vyera. "It was no good trying to help them, hang them; they don't know how to live, they spoil one another," he thought crossly. Gavrik drank noisily out of his saucer and shuffled his feet under the table.