Page 1020 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 10

The artist Mihailov was, as always, at work when the
cards of Count Vronsky and Golenishtchev were brought
to him. In the morning he had been working in his studio
at his big picture. On getting home he flew into a rage
with his wife for not having managed to put off the
landlady, who had been asking for money.
‘I’ve said it to you twenty times, don’t enter into
details. You’re fool enough at all times, and when you
start explaining things in Italian you’re a fool three times as
foolish,’ he said after a long dispute.
‘Don’t let it run so long; it’s not my fault. If I had the
money..’
‘Leave me in peace, for God’s sake!’ Mihailov shrieked,
with tears in his voice, and, stopping his ears, he went off
into his working room, the other side of a partition wall,
and closed the door after him. ‘Idiotic woman!’ he said to
himself, sat down to the table, and, opening a portfolio, he
set to work at once with peculiar fervor at a sketch he had
begun.
Never did he work with such fervor and success as
when things went ill with him, and especially when he

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