"He, too, is in the service of our enemies?" "Who?" asked the spy, scarcely raising his head. "The writer." "What enemies? What do you mean?" The spy's face was mocking, and his lips curled in aversion. Yevsey grew confused, and Maklakov without awaiting his answer arose, and tossed a silver coin on the table. "Charge it up," he said to someone. He put on his hat, and without a word to Klimkov walked to the door. Yevsey followed on tiptoe, not daring to put on his hat. "Be at the place at nine o'clock to-morrow. You will be relieved at twelve," said Maklakov in the street. He thrust his hands in his coat pockets, and disappeared. "He didn't say 'good-by,'" thought Yevsey aggrieved, walking along the deserted street. When he entered within the circles of light thrown by the street lamps, he slackened his pace, and instinctively hastened over the parts enveloped in obscurity. He felt ill. Darkness surrounded him on all sides. It was cold. The gluey, bitter taste of beer penetrated from his mouth into his chest, and his heart beat unevenly. Languid thoughts stirred in his head like heavy flakes of autumn snow. "There, I've served a day. How they all are--these different days. If only somebody liked me." At night Yevsey dreamed that his cousin Yashka seated himself on his chest, seized him by the throat, and choked him. He awoke, and heard Piotr's angry dry thin voice in the other room: "I spit upon the Czar's empire and all this hum-buggery!" A woman laughed, and someone's thin voice sounded: "Hush, hush, don't bawl." "I have no time to calculate who is right, and who is wrong. I am not a fool, I am young, and I ought to live. This rapscallion reads me lectures about autocracy, and I fuss about for three hours as a waiter, near every sort of scamp. My feet ache, my back pains from the bows. If the autocracy is dear to you, then don't be stingy with your money. But I won't sell my pride to the autocracy for a mere penny. To the devil with it!" Yevsey looked drowsily through the window, his gaze losing itself in the sleepy depth of the autumn morning. Blinded, he quietly flung himself back in bed, and again fell asleep. Several hours later he was sitting on the curb opposite Pertzev's house. He walked back and forth a long time, counted the windows in the house, measured its width with his steps, studied in all its details the grey front flabby with old age, and finally grew tired. But he had not much time to rest. The writer himself came out of the door with an overcoat flung over his shoulders, no overshoes on his feet, his hat on one side of his head. He walked across the street straight up to Yevsey. "He will give me a slap in the face," thought Yevsey, looking at the sullen face and the lowering red brows. He tried to rise and go away, but was unable to move, chained to the spot by fear. "Why are you sitting here?" he heard an angry voice. "Nothing." "Get away from here." "I can't."