A maid, barefooted, with skirt caught up, with a wet rag in her hand, with face striped from dirt, answered the bell—she had just been washing the floor. “I’d like to see Jennka,” timidly requested Lichonin. “Well, now, the young lady is busy with a guest. They haven’t waked up yet.” “Well, Tamara then.” The maid looked at him mistrustfully. “Miss Tamara—I don’t know... I think she’s busy too. But what you want—to pay a visit, or what?” “Ah, isn’t it all the same! A visit, let’s say.” “I don’t know. I’ll go and look. Wait a while.” She went away, leaving Lichonin in the half-dark drawing room. The blue pillars of dust, coming from the openings in the shutters, pierced the heavy obscurity in all directions. Like hideous spots stood out of the gray murkiness the bepainted furniture and the sweetish oleographs on the walls. It smelt of yesterday’s tobacco, of dampness, sourness; and of something else peculiar, indeterminate, uninhabited, of which places that are lived in only temporarily always smell in the morning—such as empty theatres, dance-halls, auditoriums. Far off in the city a droshky rumbled intermittently. The wall-clock monotonously ticked behind the wall. In a strange agitation Lichonin walked back and forth through the drawing room and rubbed and kneaded his trembling hands, and for some reason was stooping and felt cold. “I shouldn’t have started all this false comedy,” he thought with irritation. “It goes without saying that I’ve now become the by-word of the entire university. The devil nudged me! And even during the day yesterday it wasn’t too late, when she was saying that she was ready to go back. All I had to do was to give her for a cabby and a little pin money, and she’d have gone, and all would have been fine; and I would be independent now, free, and wouldn’t be undergoing this tormenting and ignominious state of spirits. But it’s too late to retreat now. To-morrow it’ll be still later, and the day after to-morrow—still more. Having pulled off one fool stunt, it must be immediately put a stop to; but on the other hand, if you don’t do that in time, it draws two others after it, and they—twenty new ones. Or, perhaps, it’s not too late now? Why, she’s silly, undeveloped, and, probably, a hysteric, like the rest of them. She’s an animal, fit only for stuffing herself and for the bed. Oh! The devil!” Lichonin forcefully squeezed his cheeks and his forehead between his hands and shut his eyes. “And if I had but held out against the common, coarse, physical temptation! There, you see for yourself, this has happened twice already; and then it’ll go on and on ...” But side by side with these ran other thoughts, opposed to them: