“What a pretty dress you have,” and with his finger he touched the gold fringe of her fichu. “Oh, is it?...” said the dark woman listlessly. “What province do you come from?” “I? From a distance.... From Tchernigov.” “A fine province. It’s nice there.” “Any place seems nice when one is not in it.” “It’s a pity I cannot describe nature,” thought Vassilyev. “I might touch her by a description of nature in Tchernigov. No doubt she loves the place if she has been born there.” “Are you dull here?” he asked. “Of course I am dull.” “Why don’t you go away from here if you are dull?” “Where should I go to? Go begging or what?” “Begging would be easier than living here.” “How do you know that? Have you begged?” “Yes, when I hadn’t the money to study. Even if I hadn’t anyone could understand that. A beggar is anyway a free man, and you are a slave.” The dark woman stretched, and watched with sleepy eyes the footman who was bringing a trayful of glasses and seltzer water. “Stand me a glass of porter,” she said, and yawned again. “Porter,” thought Vassilyev. “And what if your brother or mother walked in at this moment? What would you say? And what would they say? There would be porter then, I imagine....” All at once there was the sound of weeping. From the adjoining room, from which the footman had brought the seltzer water, a fair man with a red face and angry eyes ran in quickly. He was followed by the tall, stout “madam,” who was shouting in a shrill voice: “Nobody has given you leave to slap girls on the cheeks! We have visitors better than you, and they don’t fight! Impostor!” A hubbub arose. Vassilyev was frightened and turned pale. In the next room there was the sound of bitter, genuine weeping, as though of someone insulted. And he realized that there were real people living here who, like people everywhere else, felt insulted, suffered, wept, and cried for help. The feeling of oppressive hate and disgust gave way to an acute feeling of pity and anger against the aggressor. He rushed into the room where there was weeping. Across rows of bottles on a marble-top table he distinguished a suffering face, wet with tears, stretched out his hands towards that face, took a step towards the table, but at once drew back in horror. The weeping girl was drunk. As he made his way though the noisy crowd gathered about the fair man, his heart sank and he felt frightened like a child; and it seemed to him that in this alien, incomprehensible world people wanted to pursue him, to beat him, to pelt him with filthy words.... He tore down his coat from the hatstand and ran headlong downstairs. V