into depression. He walked about the park dejectedly, continually
sighing: "Oh, my God! My God!" and at dinner did not eat a morsel.
At last, guilty and conscience-stricken, he knocked at the locked
door and called timidly:

"Tanya! Tanya!"

And from behind the door came a faint voice, weak with crying but
still determined:

"Leave me alone, if you please."

The depression of the master and mistress was reflected in the whole
household, even in the labourers working in the garden. Kovrin was
absorbed in his interesting work, but at last he, too, felt dreary
and uncomfortable. To dissipate the general ill-humour in some way,
he made up his mind to intervene, and towards evening he knocked
at Tanya's door. He was admitted.

"Fie, fie, for shame!" he began playfully, looking with surprise
at Tanya's tear-stained, woebegone face, flushed in patches with
crying. "Is it really so serious? Fie, fie!"

"But if you knew how he tortures me!" she said, and floods of
scalding tears streamed from her big eyes. "He torments me to death,"
she went on, wringing her hands. "I said nothing to him . . . nothing
. . . I only said that there was no need to keep . . . too many
labourers . . . if we could hire them by the day when we wanted
them. You know . . . you know the labourers have been doing nothing
for a whole week. . . . I . . . I . . . only said that, and he