‘‘I’m in anguish . . .’’ whispered Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and to keep from falling, she gripped the armrest of the chair with both hands.
‘‘He’s in convulsions!’’ von Koren said gaily, coming into the drawing room, but, seeing Nadezhda Fyodorovna, he became embarrassed and left.
When the hysterics were over, Laevsky sat on the strange bed and thought:
‘‘Disgrace, I howled like a little girl! I must be ridiculous and vile. I’ll leave by the back stairs . . . Though that would mean I attach serious significance to my hysterics. I ought to downplay them like a joke . . . ’’
He looked in the mirror, sat for a little while, and went to the drawing room.
‘‘Here I am!’’ he said, smiling; he was painfully ashamed, and he felt that the others were also ashamed in his presence. ‘‘Imagine that,’’ he said, taking a seat. ‘‘I was sitting there and suddenly, you know, I felt an awful, stabbing pain in my side...unbearable, my nerves couldn’t stand it, and...and this stupid thing occurred. This nervous age of ours, there’s nothing to be done!’’
Over supper he drank wine, talked, and from time to time, sighing spasmodically, stroked his side as if to show that the pain could still be felt. And nobody except Nadezhda Fyodorovna believed him, and he saw it.
After nine o’clock they went for a stroll on the boulevard. Nadezhda Fyodorovna, fearing that Kirilin might start talking to her, tried to keep near Marya Konstantinovna and the children all the time. She grew weak from fright and anguish and, anticipating a fever, suffered and could barely move her legs, but she would not go home, because she was sure that either Kirilin or Atchmianov, or both of them, would follow her. Kirilin walked behind her, next to Nikodim Alexandrych, and intoned in a low voice:
‘‘I will not alo-o-ow myself to be to-o-oyed with! I will not alo-o-ow it!’’
From the boulevard they turned towards the pavilion, and for a long time gazed at the phosphorescent sea. Von Koren began to explain what made it phosphoresce.
XIV
‘‘HOWEVER, IT’S TIME for my vint... They’re waiting for me,’’ said Laevsky. ‘‘Good night, ladies and gentlemen.’’
‘‘Wait, I’ll go with you,’’ said Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and she took his arm. They took leave of the company and walked off. Kirilin also took his leave, said he was going the same way, and walked with them.
‘‘What will be, will be . . .’’ thought Nadezhda Fyodorovna. ‘‘Let it come . . .’’
It seemed to her that all her bad memories had left her head and were walking in the darkness beside her and breathing heavily, while she herself, like a fly that had fallen into ink, forced herself to crawl down the sidewalk, staining Laevsky’s side and arm with black. If Kirilin does something bad, she thought, it will not be his fault, but hers alone. There was a time when no man would have talked to her as Kirilin had done, and she herself had snapped off that time like a thread and destroyed it irretrievably—whose fault was that? Intoxicated by her own desires, she had begun to smile at a totally unknown man, probably only because he was stately and tall, after two meetings she had become bored with him and had dropped him, and didn’t that, she now thought, give him the right to act as he pleased with her?
‘‘Here, my dove, I’ll say good-bye to you,’’ said Laevsky, stopping. ‘‘Ilya Mikhailych will see you home.’’
He bowed to Kirilin and quickly headed across the boulevard, went down the street to Sheshkovsky’s house, where there were lights in the windows, and then they heard the gate slam.
‘‘Allow me to explain myself to you,’’ Kirilin began. ‘‘I’m not a boy, not some sort of Atchkasov, or Latchkasov, or Zatchkasov . . . I demand serious attention!’’
Nadezhda Fyodorovna’s heart was beating fast. She made no reply.
‘‘At first I explained the abrupt change in your behavior towards me by coquetry,’’ Kirilin went on, ‘‘but now I see that you simply do not know how to behave with respectable people. You simply wanted to toy with me as with this Armenian boy, but I am a respectable person, and I demand to be treated as a respectable person. And so I am at your service . . .’’
‘‘I’m in anguish . . .’’ said Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and she turned away to hide her tears.
‘‘I am also in anguish, but what follows from that?’’
Kirilin was silent for a while and then said distinctly, measuredly:
‘‘I repeat, madam, that if you do not grant me a meeting tonight, then tonight I shall make a scandal.’’
‘‘Let me go tonight,’’ said Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and she did not recognize her own voice, so pathetic and thin it was.
‘‘I must teach you a lesson...Forgive me this rude tone, but it’s necessary for me to teach you a lesson. Yes, ma’am, unfortunately I must teach you a lesson. I demand two meetings: tonight and tomorrow. After tomorrow you are completely free and can go wherever you like with whom-ever you like. Tonight and tomorrow.’’
Nadezhda Fyodorovna went up to her gate and stopped.
‘‘Let me go!’’ she whispered, trembling all over and seeing nothing before her in the darkness except a white tunic. ‘‘You’re right, I’m a terrible woman . . . I’m to blame, but let me go . . . I beg you . . .’’ she touched his cold hand and shuddered, ‘‘I implore you . . .’’
‘‘Alas!’’ sighed Kirilin. ‘‘Alas! It is not in my plans to let you go, I merely want to teach you a lesson, to make you understand, and besides, madam, I have very little faith in women.’’
‘‘I’m in anguish . . .’’
Nadezhda Fyodorovna listened to the steady sound of the sea, looked at the sky strewn with stars, and wished she could end it all quickly and be rid of this cursed sensation of life with its sea, stars, men, fever...
‘‘Only not in my house . . .’’ she said coldly. ‘‘Take me somewhere.’’
‘‘Let’s go to Miuridov’s. That’s best.’’
‘‘Where is it?’’
