"'It's very simple and easy to understand,' replied Kisotchka,
raising her eyebrows. 'There is absolutely nothing for us educated
girls and women to do with ourselves. Not everyone is able to go
to the University, to become a teacher, to live for ideas, in fact,
as men do. They have to be married. . . . And whom would you have
them marry? You boys leave the high-school and go away to the
University, never to return to your native town again, and you marry
in Petersburg or Moscow, while the girls remain. . . . To whom are
they to be married? Why, in the absence of decent cultured men,
goodness knows what sort of men they marry--stockbrokers and such
people of all kinds, who can do nothing but drink and get into rows
at the club. . . . A girl married like that, at random. . . . And
what is her life like afterwards? You can understand: a well-educated,
cultured woman is living with a stupid, boorish man; if she meets
a cultivated man, an officer, an actor, or a doctor--well, she
gets to love him, her life becomes unbearable to her, and she runs
away from her husband. And one can't condemn her!'

"'If that is so, Kisotchka, why get married?' I asked.

"'Yes, of course,' said Kisotchka with a sigh, 'but you know every
girl fancies that any husband is better than nothing. . . . Altogether
life is horrid here, Nikolay Anastasyevitch, very horrid! Life is
stifling for a girl and stifling when one is married. . . . Here
they laugh at Sonya for having run away from her husband, but if
they could see into her soul they would not laugh. . . .'"

Azorka began barking outside again. He growled angrily at some one,
then howled miserably and dashed with all his force against the
wall of the hut. . . . Ananyev's face was puckered with pity; he