"That usually passes away," answered Miss Anney. And she turned to the doors of the salon, but without unnecessary haste, as if she desired to show Ladislaus that she accepted as good coin his explanations and that her return was not a manifestation of displeasure. He remained a while, angry at himself and yet more angry at Miss Anney for the simple reason that the indiscretion was committed solely by him and he could not blame her for anything. "In any case," he said to himself, "that is some deucedly penetrating Puritan." And he began to repeat, with some indignation, her last words: "That usually passes away." "Did she," he thought, "intend to give me to understand that from such grist as is in me nobody could bake any poetry. Perhaps it is true, and I know that better than anyone else, but it is unnecessary for anybody to corroborate the fact." Under the influence of these thoughts he returned to the salon in not quite good humor, but there the duties of host summoned him to his feminine cousins and that evening he did not converse any more with Miss Anney. VI The notary left the same night because his official duties required his presence in the city the following morning. On the day after, Gronski, whom Pani Otocka requested to act as her representative, with Ladislaus and Dolhanski departed for the notarial bureau. All three were troubled and curious about the will, of which the notary did not drop a single hint. Dolhanski feigned a jocose mien and displayed more sangfroid than he really possessed. He was most anxious that something should "drop off" for him. He was a man who had squandered a large fortune, but, not having changed his habits, kept on living as if he had not lost anything. Therefore he sustained himself upon the surface of life by the aid of extraordinary, almost acrobatic, efforts, of which after all he made no secret. In general, he was a sponger and possessed a million faults, but also certain social qualities for which he was esteemed. Belonging to an aristocratic club, he played cards with unusual good luck, but irreproachably. He never borrowed money from people in his own sphere; never gossiped, and was a tolerably loyal friend. Lack of education he supplied with cleverness and a certain intellectual grasp. He jested about himself, but it was unsafe to jest at him, because he possessed, besides wit, a certain candor which bordered upon cynicism. So he was not only countenanced but willingly received. Gronski, for whom Dolhanski had such high regard that he permitted him alone to jest about him, said that if Dolhanski only had as great a gift of making money as he had of spending it, he would have been a millionaire.