Patches of red came out of her cheeks, her eyes swelled, and tears flowed down her kittenish face. . . . "What is it?" cried Groholsky in a flutter. "Liza! what's the matter? Come! what are you crying for? What a girl! Come, what is it? Darling! Little woman!" Liza held out her hands to Groholsky, and hung on his neck. There was a sound of sobbing. "I am sorry for him . . ." muttered Liza. "Oh, I am so sorry for him!" "Sorry for whom?" "Va--Vanya. . . ." "And do you suppose I'm not? But what's to be done? We are causing him suffering. . . . He will be unhappy, will curse us . . . but is it our fault that we love one another?" As he uttered the last word, Groholsky darted away from Liza as though he had been stung and sat down in an easy chair. Liza sprang away from his neck and rapidly--in one instant--dropped on the lounge. They both turned fearfully red, dropped their eyes, and coughed. A tall, broad-shouldered man of thirty, in the uniform of a government clerk, had walked into the drawing-room. He had walked in unnoticed. Only the bang of a chair which he knocked in the doorway had warned the lovers of his presence, and made them look round. It was the husband. They had looked round too late. He had seen Groholsky's arm round Liza's waist, and had seen Liza hanging on Groholsky's white and aristocratic neck. "He saw us!" Liza and Groholsky thought at the same moment, while they did not know what to do with their heavy hands and embarrassed eyes. . . . The petrified husband, rosy-faced, turned white. An agonising, strange, soul-revolting silence lasted for three minutes. Oh, those three minutes! Groholsky remembers them to this day. The first to move and break the silence was the husband. He stepped up to Groholsky and, screwing his face into a senseless grimace like a smile, gave him his hand. Groholsky shook the soft perspiring hand and shuddered all over as though he had crushed a cold frog in his fist. "Good evening," he muttered. "How are you?" the husband brought out in a faint husky, almost inaudible voice, and he sat down opposite Groholsky, straightening his collar at the back of his neck. Again, an agonising silence followed . . . but that silence was no longer so stupid. . . . The first step, most difficult and colourless, was over. All that was left now was for one of the two to depart in search of matches or on some such trifling errand. Both longed intensely to get away. They sat still, not looking at one another, and pulled at their beards while they ransacked their troubled brains for some means of escape from their horribly awkward position. Both were perspiring. Both were unbearably miserable and both were devoured by hatred. They longed to begin the tussle but how were they to begin and which was to begin first? If only she would have gone out! "I saw you yesterday at the Assembly Hall," muttered Bugrov (that was the husband's name). "Yes, I was there . . . the ball . . . did you dance?"