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And about two days later he would come to undergo the same torture again. One day he asked her timidly: "Sophya Pavlovna! Have you ever had any children?" "No." "I thought not!" exclaimed Foma with delight. She cast at him the look of a very naive little girl, and said: "What made you think so? And why do you want to know whether I had any children or not?"
She had been standing in the doorway for quite a long while, and, folding her hands, lovingly admired the enormous figure of her brother, who bent over Foma with such friendliness, and the pensive pose of the boy, who clung to his father's shoulder. Thus day by day Foma's life developed slowly a quiet, peaceful life, not at all brimful of emotions.
Lubov Mayakina was now studying in the fifth class of some boarding school. Foma often met her on the street at which meeting she always bowed condescendingly, her fair head in a fashionable cap. Foma liked her, but her rosy cheeks, her cheerful brown eyes and crimson lips could not smooth the impression of offence given to him by her condescending bows.
He soon learned that they both were the very best boys in school and that they were the first to attract everybody's attention, even as the two figures 5 and 7, which had not yet been wiped off the blackboard. And Foma felt very much pleased that his friends were better than any of the other boys.
And the dimness in the room was growing thicker and thicker, outside the window it was heavy with darkness, and the black branches of the linden-trees were shaking pensively. "You might light the lamp," Foma went on. "How unhappy we both are," said Luba, with a sigh. Foma did not like this. "I am not unhappy," he objected in a firm voice. "I am simply not yet accustomed to life."
Without lifting his eyes off the forest and the fire, so beautiful in the darkness, Foma made a few steps aside from Yozhov and said to him in a low voice: "Don't play the fool. Why do you abuse me at random?" "I want to remain alone, and finish singing my song." Staggering, he, too, moved aside from Foma, and after a few seconds again exclaimed in a sobbing voice: "My song is done!
If your father were to see you now. Eh!" "And yet," said Foma, suddenly, loudly, with assurance, and his eyes again flared up, "and yet it is all your fault! You have spoiled life! You have made everything narrow. We are suffocating because of you! And though my truth against you is weak, it is truth, nevertheless! You are godless wretches! May you all be cursed!"
"If the deceased Ignat could read in the newspapers of the indecent life his son is leading, he would have killed Foma!" said Mayakin, striking the table with his fists. "How they have written it up! It's a disgrace!" "He deserves it," said Lubov. "I don't say it was done at random! They've barked at him, as was necessary. And who was it that got into such a fit of anger?"
"Why? Sleep, darling, sleep." "I am afraid," confessed the boy. "You better say to yourself, 'And the Lord will rise again, then you won't be afraid." Foma lies with his eyes open and says the prayer.
The two old men convulsively clasped each other in their arms, exchanged warm kisses and then stepped apart. The wrinkles of the older man quivered, the lean face of the younger was immobile, almost stern. The kisses had changed nothing in the external side of this scene, only Lubov burst into a sob of joy, and Foma awkwardly moved about in his seat, feeling as though his breath were failing him.
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