"There were such even in our day ... of course there were! But who were they? Some street-walker, or shameless hussy or other. She would drag her skirts about, and fling herself hither and thither at random.... What did she care? What anxiety had she? If a young fool came along, he fell into her hands. But steady-going people despised them. Dost thou remember ever to have beheld such in our house?" Aratoff made no reply and returned to his study. Platonida Ivanovna gazed after him, shook her head and again donned her spectacles, again set to work on her scarf ... but more than once she fell into thought and dropped her knitting-needles on her knee. And Aratoff until nightfall kept again and again beginning, with the same vexation, the same ire as before, to think about "the gipsy," the appointed tryst, to which he certainly would not go! During the night also she worried him. He kept constantly seeing her eyes, now narrowed, now widely opened, with their importunate gaze riveted directly on him, and those impassive features with their imperious expression. On the following morning he again kept expecting Kupfer, for some reason or other; he came near writing him a letter ... however, he did nothing ... but spent most of his time pacing to and fro in his study. Not for one instant did he even admit to himself the thought that he would go to that stupid "rendezvous" ... and at half-past four, after having swallowed his dinner in haste, he suddenly donned his overcoat and pulling his cap down on his brows, he stole out of the house without letting his aunt see him and wended his way to the Tver boulevard. VII