‘‘By the old ramparts.’’
She walked quickly down the street and then turned into a lane that led to the mountains. It was dark. On the pavement here and there lay pale strips of light from lighted windows, and it seemed to her that she was like a fly that first fell into ink, then crawled out again into the light. Kirilin walked behind her. At one point he stumbled, nearly fell, and laughed.
‘‘He’s drunk . . .’’ thought Nadezhda Fyodorovna. ‘‘It’s all the same...all the same...Let it be.’’
Atchmianov also soon took leave of the company and followed Nadezhda Fyodorovna so as to invite her for a boat ride. He went up to her house and looked across the front garden: the windows were wide open, there was no light.
‘‘Nadezhda Fyodorovna!’’ he called.
A minute passed. He called again.
‘‘Who’s there?’’ came Olga’s voice.
‘‘Is Nadezhda Fyodorovna at home?’’
‘‘No. She hasn’t come yet.’’
‘‘Strange...Very strange,’’ thought Atchmianov, beginning to feel greatly worried. ‘‘She did go home . . .’’
He strolled along the boulevard, then down the street, and looked in Sheshkovsky’s windows. Laevsky, without his frock coat, was sitting at the table and looking intently at his cards.
‘‘Strange, strange . . .’’ murmured Atchmianov, and, recollecting the hysterics that had come over Laevsky, he felt ashamed. ‘‘If she’s not at home, where is she?’’
And again he went to Nadezhda Fyodorovna’s apartment and looked at the dark windows.
‘‘Deceit, deceit . . .’’ he thought, remembering that she herself, on meeting him that noon at the Bitiugovs’, had promised to go for a boat ride with him in the evening.
The windows of the house where Kirilin lived were dark, and a policeman sat asleep on a bench by the gate. As he looked at the windows and the policeman, everything became clear to Atchmianov. He decided to go home and went, but again wound up by Nadezhda Fyodorovna’s. There he sat down on a bench and took off his hat, feeling his head burning with jealousy and offense.
The clock on the town church struck only twice a day, at noon and at midnight. Soon after it struck midnight, he heard hurrying footsteps.
‘‘So, tomorrow evening at Miuridov’s again!’’ Atchmianov heard, and recognized Kirilin’s voice. ‘‘At eight o’clock. Good-bye, ma’am!’’
Nadezhda Fyodorovna appeared by the front garden. Not noticing Atchmianov sitting on the bench, she walked past him like a shadow, opened the gate, and, leaving it open, walked into the house. In her room, she lighted a candle, undressed quickly, yet did not go to bed, but sank onto her knees in front of a chair, put her arms around it, and leaned her forehead against it.
Laevsky came home past two o’clock.
XV
HAVING DECIDED NOT to lie all at once, but piecemeal, Laevsky went to Samoilenko the next day after one o’clock to ask for the money, so as to be sure to leave on Saturday. After yesterday’s hysterics, which to the painful state of his mind had added an acute sense of shame, remaining in town was unthinkable. If Samoilenko insists on his conditions, he thought, he could agree to them and take the money, and tomorrow, just at the time of departure, tell him that Nadezhda Fyodorovna had refused to go; he could persuade her in the evening that the whole thing was being done for her benefit. And if Samoilenko, who was obviously under the influence of von Koren, refused entirely or suggested some new conditions, then he, Laevsky, would leave that same day on a freighter or even a sailboat, for Novy Afon or Novorossiisk, send his mother a humiliating telegram from there, and live there until his mother sent him money for the trip.
Coming to Samoilenko’s, he found von Koren in the drawing room. The zoologist had just come for dinner and, as usual, had opened the album and was studying the men in top hats and women in caps.
‘‘How inopportune,’’ thought Laevsky, seeing him. ‘‘He may hinder everything.’’
‘‘Good afternoon!’’
‘‘Good afternoon,’’ replied von Koren without looking at him.
‘‘Is Alexander Davidych at home?’’
‘‘Yes. In the kitchen.’’
Laevsky went to the kitchen, but, seeing through the doorway that Samoilenko was busy with the salad, he returned to the drawing room and sat down. He always felt awkward in the zoologist’s presence, and now he was afraid he would have to talk about his hysterics. More than a minute passed in silence. Von Koren suddenly raised his eyes to Laevsky and asked:
‘‘How do you feel after yesterday?’’
‘‘Splendid,’’ Laevsky replied, blushing. ‘‘Essentially there was nothing very special . . .’’
‘‘Until last night I assumed that only ladies had hysterics, and so I thought at first that what you had was Saint Vitus’s dance.’’
Laevsky smiled ingratiatingly and thought:
‘‘How indelicate on his part. He knows perfectly well that it’s painful for me...’’
‘‘Yes, it was a funny story,’’ he said, still smiling. ‘‘I spent this whole morning laughing. The curious thing about a fit of hysterics is that you know it’s absurd, and you laugh at it in your heart, and at the same time you’re sobbing. In our nervous age, we’re slaves to our nerves; they’re our masters and do whatever they like with us. In this respect, civilization is a dubious blessing...’’
Laevsky talked, and found it unpleasant that von Koren listened to him seriously and attentively, and looked at
