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An expression of agitation was clearly depicted on Lubov's face, and she said with dissatisfaction and at the same time apologetically: "Ah! So it's you?" "They've been speaking of me," thought Foma, as he seated himself at the table. Taras turned his eyes away from him and sank deeper in the armchair. There was an awkward silence lasting for about a minute, and this pleased Foma.
Suppose I see that all is deceit, that business is not business, but merely a plug that we prop up with it the emptiness of our souls; that some work, while others only give orders and sweat, but get more for that. Why is it so? Eh?" "I cannot grasp your idea," announced Taras, when Foma paused, feeling on himself Lubov's contemptuous and angry look.
Recalling Lubov's bearing toward her brother, and influenced, to a certain degree, by her stories about Taras, he expected to see in him something unusual, something unlike the ordinary people. He had thought that Taras would speak in some peculiar way, would dress in a manner peculiar to himself; and in general he would be unlike other people.
Smolin noted all these and an ironical smile began to play upon his lips. Then he glanced at Lubov's face: in his look she caught something friendly, sympathetic to her. A faint flush covered her cheeks, and she said to herself with timid joy: "Thank God!" The light of the heavy bronze lamp now seemed to flash more brilliantly on the sides of the crystal vases, and it became brighter in the room.
He frowned and in an angry manner ordered his daughter, who was silently pouring out tea: "Push the sugar nearer to me. Don't you see that I can't reach it?" Lubov's face was pale, her eyes seemed troubled, and her hands moved lazily and awkwardly. Foma looked at her and thought: "How meek she is in the presence of her father." "What did he speak to you about?" asked Mayakin. "About sins."
And here his thoughts rested on Lubov's complaints. His gait became slower; he was now astounded by the fact that all the people that were near to him and with whom he talked a great deal, always spoke to him of life. His father, his aunt, his godfather, Lubov, Sophya Pavlovna, all these either taught him to understand life, or complained of it.
Gathered together in Lubov's house they would read some books, and whenever he found them reading or loudly arguing, they became silent at his sight. All this removed them further from him. One day when he was at Mayakin's, Luba called him to go for a walk in the garden, and there, walking by his side, asked him with a grimace on her face: "Why are you so unsociable?
Mayakin looked at his daughter with alarm. She was silent. "Tell me," he asked her, "what do you need? How, in your opinion, is it proper to live? What do you want? You have studied, read, tell me what is it that you need?" The questions fell on Lubov's head quite unexpectedly to her, and she was embarrassed.
Then came Lubov's lowered and hasty speech: "He was carousing here all the time. He carried on dreadfully! It all started somehow of a sudden. The first thing he did was to thrash the son-in-law of the Vice-Governor at the Club. Papa had to take the greatest pains to hush up the scandal, and it was a good thing that the Vice-Governor's son-in-law is a man of very bad reputation.
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