ested to his imagination that the train had come and brought no
one, and that he might enjoy an interval of distraction in looking out of
the window until the next one arrived. The Count must have had a very
exaggerated idea of the facility of communication between Munich and
Russia, for he assuredly stood waiting for his friends, combed, brushed,
and altogether at his best, more than twenty times between the morning and
the evening. As the day declined, indeed, his imaginary railway station
must have presented a scene of dangerous confusion, for his international
express trains seemed to come in quicker and quicker succession, until he
barely had time to look out of the window before it became necessary to
comb his hair again in order to be ready for the next possible arrival. At
last he walked perpetually on a monotonous beat from the window to the
mirror, from the mirror to the door, and from the door to the mirror
again.

Suddenly he stopped and tapped his forehead with his hand. The sun was
setting and the last of his level rays shot over the sea of roofs and the
forest of chimneys and entered the little room in a broad red stream,
illuminating the lean, nervous figure as it stood still in the ruddy
light.

"Good Heavens!" exclaimed the Count, in a tone of great anxiety, "I have
forgotten Fischelowitz and his money."

There was a considerable break in the continuity of the imaginary
time-table, for he stood still a long time, in deep thought. He was
arguing the case in his mind. What he had promised was, to consider the
fifty marks as a debt of honour. Now a debt of honour must be paid within
twenty-four hours. No doubt, thought the Count, it would not be altogether
impossible to consider the twenty-four hours as extending from midnight to
midnight. The Russians have an expression which means a day and a night
together--they call that space of time the sutki, and it is a more or less
elastic term, as we say "from day to day," "from one evening to another."
Rooms in Russian hotels are let by the sutki, railway tickets are valid
for one or more sutki, and the Count might have chosen to consider that
his sutki extended from the time when he had spoken to Fischelowitz until
twelve o'clock on the following night. But he had no means of knowing
exactly what the time had been when he had been in the shop, and his
punctilious ideas of honour drove him to under-estimate the number of
hours still at his disposal. Moreover,