“The splendid fellow!” he ventured at length (probably to conceal his embarrassment). “How could you go and have a misunderstanding with him, Vassilii Michaelovitch? . . . He tells me that you have been ill again?” he added, with tears in his eyes and unbounded embarrassment in his tone.

“Yes, I have been ill again,” replied Ordynov. Then he added to Murin: “How much do I owe you?”

“Nay, nay, my good sir, my good sir! We are not the sort of people to sell Christ! Why should you be so ready to take offence? Are you not ashamed to do so? In what have we offended you, my ward and I? Come!”

“That is not the point,” interrupted Yaroslav Ilyitch, who felt himself bound to point out to Murin the indelicacy of his procedure. “My friend here hired the room of you.”

“Monsieur Ordynov,” went on Murin, “I ask you once again—In what have we offended you? We took such trouble to make you comfortable! In fact, the doing of it simply wore us out. Of course, if you must go, you must, and may Christ go with you! But are we, for that reason, mere unbelievers and rascals? You might have continued to live with us, and to share our simple fare, and to shelter beneath our roof for ever, and we should never have had a single objection to make—never! No, we should never have had a single word to say! But the devil entered into you, and I fell ill, and my ward did so too. What, then, is to be done? There would be no one to look after you if you stayed—much as we should have liked things to have been otherwise. Yet we will pray for you, my ward and I,” he added. “Yes, we will always pray for you.” Again he bowed to his waist.

Tears of enthusiasm gushed from Yaroslav Ilyitch’s eyes.

“What a noble disposition!” he cried. “O sacred hospitality of Russia!”

Ordynov looked at him severely, from head to foot. “Yes, sir, by heavens!” cried Murin, catching at Yaroslav’s last exclamation. “We Russians are nothing if not hospitable. Consequently we beg of you to stop with us a little longer” (here he buried his beard completely in his sleeve). “Yes, you shall stop!” he went on as he rose and approached Ordynov. “You shall stop! Of that I intend to make a point. Stop at least one day, or two days, and we will ask of you no rent for doing so. But you must remember that my ward is ill. If only it had not been she! If only (for example) I had been living alone! What care I should have taken of you! That is to say, what care I should have taken of you as your landlord! Yes, I should simply have heaped favours upon your head—simply heaped them! However, I will manage so that you need never leave us. Yes, I swear that by God, much though it may sound. You know, you could stop with us permanently were it not for——”