Everybody praised her and congratulated her and protested their sympathy, so that she, who at first was timid, restless, and haunted with a feeling of oppressive melancholy, grew suddenly convinced that she had fulfilled her mission. After the theatre the whole company went to Lubinka's birthday celebration, and there the congratulations were reiterated. So large a crowd gathered in Lubinka's quarters that the tobacco smoke made it hard to breathe. They sat down to supper, and champagne began to flow freely. Kukishev kept close to Anninka. This made her somewhat shy, but she was no longer oppressed by his attentions. It seemed rather funny, but also flattering, that she had so easily gotten hold of this big, powerful man, who could bend and straighten out a horseshoe without effort, and whom she could order about and do with as she wished. The supper was crowned by that drunken, disorderly gaiety in which neither the head nor the heart takes a part, and which results only in headaches and nausea. The tragedian Miloslavsky X was the only one who looked gloomy and declined champagne, preferring plain vodka, which he gulped down glass after glass. As to Anninka, she abstained from drink for some time, but Kukishev was insistent. He went down on his knees and implored her: "Anna Semyonovna, it is your turn. I beseech you. For your happiness, for friendship and love. Do us a favor." She was annoyed by his foolish figure and foolish talk, yet she could not refuse, and before she had time to collect her thoughts, she was already dizzy. Lubinka, for her part, was so magnanimous that she herself asked her sister to sing, "How I did love it with my mash." Anninka performed it so well that everybody exclaimed, "Ah, that was just like Matryusha the gypsy." Then Lubinka sang an obscene song of a different kind, and at once convinced everybody that that kind of singing was her real genre, in which she had no rivals, just as Anninka had none in the gypsy songs. In conclusion, Miloslavsky X and Nalimova presented a "masquerade scene" in which the tragedian recited parts from _Ugolino_ (a tragedy in five acts, by Polevoy), and Nalimova followed with a scene from an unpublished tragedy of Barkov. The result was so unexpected that Nalimova nearly eclipsed the two sisters and almost became the heroine of the evening. It was already dawn when Kukishev, leaving the charming hostess, helped Anninka into her carriage. Pious townspeople were coming from matins. At the sight of Anninka, elaborately attired and somewhat unsteady on her feet, they muttered darkly, "People are coming out of church, and they are gulping wine. A curse on them!" On leaving her sister's, Anninka went not to the hotel but to her own quarters, small but snug and nicely furnished. She was followed by Kukishev.