"Oh! A bee, a bee!" she shrieked. "It will sting!"

"Nonsense; it won't sting," said Pyotr Dmitritch. "What a coward
you are!"

"No, no, no," cried Lubotchka; and looking round at the bees, she
walked rapidly back.

Pyotr Dmitritch walked away after her, looking at her with a softened
and melancholy face. He was probably thinking, as he looked at her,
of his farm, of solitude, and--who knows?--perhaps he was even
thinking how snug and cosy life would be at the farm if his wife
had been this girl--young, pure, fresh, not corrupted by higher
education, not with child. . . .

When the sound of their footsteps had died away, Olga Mihalovna
came out of the shanty and turned towards the house. She wanted to
cry. She was by now acutely jealous. She could understand that her
husband was worried, dissatisfied with himself and ashamed, and
when people are ashamed they hold aloof, above all from those nearest
to them, and are unreserved with strangers; she could understand,
also, that she had nothing to fear from Lubotchka or from those
women who were now drinking coffee indoors. But everything in general
was terrible, incomprehensible, and it already seemed to Olga
Mihalovna that Pyotr Dmitritch only half belonged to her.

"He has no right to do it!" she muttered, trying to formulate her
jealousy and her vexation with her husband. "He has no right at
all. I will tell him so plainly!"