ed.

Little White Manya, laughing, shook her head reproachfully. Jennie
always had such a face when her turbulent soul sensed that a scandal
was nearing which she herself had brought on.

"Don't get your back up, Borinka," said Lichonin. "Here all are equal."

Niura came with a pillow and laid it down on the divan.

"And what's that for?" Sobashnikov yelled at her. "Git! take it away at
once. This isn't a lodging house."

"Now, leave her be, honey. What's that to you?" retorted Jennie in a
sweet voice and hid the pillow behind Tamara's back. "Wait, sweetie,
I'd better sit with you for a while."

She walked around the table, forced Boris to sit on a chair, and
herself got up on his knees. Twining his neck with her arm, she pressed
her lips to his mouth, so long and so vigorously that the student
caught his breath. Right up close to his eyes he saw the eyes of the
woman--strangely large, dark, luminous, indistinct and unmoving. For a
quarter of a second or so, for an instant, it seemed to him that in
these unliving eyes was impressed an expression of keen, mad hate; and
the chill of terror, some vague premonition of an ominous, inevitable
calamity flashed through the student's brain. With difficulty tearing
the supple arms of Jennie away from him, and pushing her away, he said,
laughing, having turned red and breathing hard:

"There's a temperament for you! Oh, you Messalina Paphnutievna! ...
They call you Jennka, I think? You're a good-looking little rascal."

Platonov returned with Pasha. Pasha was pitiful and revolting to look
at. Her face was pale, with, a bluish cast as though the blood had run
off; the glazed, half-closed eyes were smiling with a faint, idiotic
smile; the parted lips seemed to resemble two frayed, red, wet rags,
and she walked with a sort of timid, uncertain step, just as though
with one foot she were making a large step, and with the other a small
one. She walked with docility up to the divan and with docility laid
her head down on the pillow, without ceasing to smile faintly and
insanely. Even at a distance it was apparent that she was cold.

"Pardon me, gentlemen, I am going to undress," said Lichonin, and
taking his coat off he threw it over the shoulders of the prostitute.
"Tamara, give her chocolate and wine."

Boris Sobashnikov again stood up picturesquely in the corner, in a
leaning position, one leg in front of the other and his head held high.
Suddenly he spoke amid the general