Peredonov listened to him with stupefied disappointment. He shouted: "You'd better admit that you can't do it, incompetent!" And he walked away, dragging after him the cat, which mewed continuously. On the way he thought dejectedly that everywhere and always everyone laughed at him and no one wanted to help him. His sadness oppressed his heart. Peredonov went with Volodin and Routilov to the Summer-garden to play billiards. The marker said to them with embarrassment: "I'm sorry, gentlemen, you can't play to-day." "Why not?" asked Peredonov irritatedly. "Well, I'm sorry to say there are no billiard balls," replied the marker. "Someone pinched them when he wasn't looking," said the bar-tender sternly, leaning across the counter. The marker trembled and suddenly twitched his reddened ears, as a hare does, and whispered: "They were stolen." Peredonov exclaimed in a frightened voice: "Good Lord! Who stole them?" "It's not known," said the marker; "no one seemed to have been here, and then when I went to look for the balls they weren't there." Routilov sniggered and exclaimed: "What a funny thing!" Volodin assumed an injured look and scolded the marker: "If you allow the billiard balls to be stolen when you are somewhere else and the billiard balls disappear, then you ought to have provided others for us to have something to play with. We come here and want to play, and if there are no billiard balls, how can we play?" "Don't whine, Pavloushka," said Peredonov, "it's bad enough without you. Now, marker, you go and look for those balls, we must play--but meanwhile bring us a couple of beers." They began to drink the beer. But it was tedious. The billiard balls could not be found. They wrangled with one another and they cursed the marker. The latter felt guilty and said nothing. Peredonov detected in this theft a new intrigue, hostile to himself. "Why?" he thought dejectedly, and could not understand. He went into the garden, sat down on a bench near the pond--he had never sat there before--and fixed his eyes dully on the weed-clogged water. Volodin sat down beside him and shared his grief, looking also at the pond with his sheepish eyes. "Why is there such a dirty mirror here, Pavloushka," said Peredonov, pointing at the pond with his stick. Volodin smiled and replied: "It's not a mirror, Ardasha, it's a pond. And as there's no breeze just now the trees are reflected in it as if in a mirror." Peredonov looked up; a fence on the other side of the pond separated the garden from the street. Peredonov asked: "Why is the cat on that fence?" Volodin looked in the same direction and said with a snigger: "It was there, but it's gone." There really had been no cat--it was an illusion of Peredonov's--a cat with wide green eyes, his cunning, tireless enemy. Peredonov began to think about the billiard balls: