`Sleep well!' Mashurina's voice called through the door. 'I am next door to you.'
'Good-night,' answered Nezhdanov, and then it came into his mind that she had not taken her eyes off him all the evening.
'What does she want?' he muttered, and at once felt ashamed of himself. 'Ah, to sleep as soon as maybe!'
But it was hard to master his overwrought nerves . . . and the sun stood high in the sky when at last he fell into a heavy, comfortless sleep.
The next morning he got up late with a headache. He dressed, went to the window of his attic room, and saw that Markelov had practically no farm at all. His little box of a house stood on a ravine not far from a wood. A little granary, a stable, a cellar, a little hut with a half tumble-down thatch-roof, on one side; on the other, a diminutive lake, a patch of kitchen garden, a hemp-field, another little hut with a similar roof; in the distance an outhouse, a barn, and an empty thrashing-floor—this was all the wealth that could be seen. It all seemed poor, decaying, and not exactly neglected or run wild, but as though it had never thrived, like a tree that has not taken root well. Nezhdanov went downstairs. Mashurina was sitting
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