send his wife away; but he implored her, and she herself acknowledged, that it was rather for show than because she meant it. Finally it was decided that Pavel Konstantinuitch should retain his place as manager; that they should give up their rooms facing the street and take another suite in the back of the building, on condition that his wife should not dare to show her face in those places on the first dvor where the khozyáïka's eyes might fall; and that she should be obliged to go out of doors, when she went at all, by a staircase that lay far from the khozyáïka's windows. From the twenty rubles a month that had been added to his salary, fifteen rubles should be taken back and five rubles would be left to him for a compensation for the manager's energy in the khozyáïka's interests and towards the expenses of his daughter's wedding.
XXIII.
Marya Alekséyevna had a number of schemes in mind as to the way to act towards Lopukhóf when he should come in the evening. The most revengeful was to hide two dvorniks in the kitchen, who at a given signal should throw themselves on Lopukhóf, and beat him to death. The most pathetic was solemnly to pronounce with her own lips, aided by Pavel Konstantinuitch, a parental curse on their disobedient daughter and on him, their murderer, with an explanation that the curse was valid,—even the earth, as is well known, does not receive the dust of those who are cursed by their parents. But this belonged to the same category of imaginations as the khozyáïka had, in regard to separating Pavel Konstantinuitch from his wife; for such schemes, like any other poetry, have no practical application, properly speaking, except to relieve the heart, by furnishing a framework for endless thoughts in solitude, and for other explanations, when, by and by, she should come to speak about it; as, for example, he or she might have done this or that, and he or she intended to do so, but, owing to his or her kindness, he or she felt grieved to do so.
The plan of beating Lopukhóf and cursing her daughter were the ideal part of Marya Alekséyevna's thoughts and feelings. But the actual part of her mind and soul took a direction not so lofty, but more practical; and this difference is attributable to the inherent weakness of every human be-
