Rayisa grew thinner, blue circles appeared under her eyes, her gaze became still more immobile and dull. On evenings when the spy was away from home she sent Yevsey for whiskey, which she gulped down in little glassfuls at a time. Then she spoke to him in an even voice. What she said was confused and unintelligible, and she frequently halted and sighed. Her large body grew flabby, she undid one button after the other, untied her ribbons, and half-dressed spread herself on the armchair like sour dough. "I am bored," she said shaking her head. "Bored! If you were handsomer, or older, you might divert me in my gloom. Oh, how useless you are!" Yevsey hung his head in silence. His heart was pricked with the burning cold of insult. "Well, why are you staring at the floor?" he heard her sad complaining. "Others at your age would have started to love girls long ago; they live a living life. While you--oh, how irresponsive you are!" Sometimes, after she had drunk whiskey, she drew him to herself, and toyed with him. This awoke a complex feeling of fear, shame, and sharp yet not bold curiosity. He shut his eyes tightly, and yielded himself silently, involuntarily, to the power of her shameless, coarse hands. The weak, anæmic boy was oppressed by the debilitating premonition of something terrible. "Go to bed, go! Oh, my God!" she exclaimed, pushing him away, dissatisfied and disgusted. Yevsey left her to go to the anteroom in which he slept. Gradually losing the undefined warm feeling he had for her, he withdrew into himself more and more. As he lay in bed filled with a sense of insult and sharp, disagreeable excitement, he heard Rayisa singing in a thick cooing voice--always the same song--and heard the clink of the bottle against the glass. But once on a dark night when fine streams of autumn rain lashed the window near his room with a howl, Rayisa succeeded in arousing in the youngster the feeling she needed. "There, now," she said, smiling a drunken smile. "Now you are my paramour. You see how good it is? Eh?" He stood at the bed also intoxicated of a sudden. His feet trembled, he was out of breath. He looked at her large, soft body, at her broad face spread in a smile. He was no longer ashamed, but his heart was seized with the grief of loss, and it sank within him outraged. For some reason he wanted to weep. But he was silent. This woman was a stranger to him, unnecessary and unpleasant; all the good kind feelings he had cherished for her were at one gulp swallowed up by her greedy body, and disappeared into it without leaving a trace, like belated drops in a muddy pool. "We'll live together, and we'll give Dorimedont the go-by, the pig." "But won't he find out?" inquired Yevsey quietly. "Oh, you little coward, come here!"