silence, addressing Platonov
directly, in a most foppish tone:

"Eh ... Listen ... what's your name? ... This, then, must be your
mistress? Eh?" And with the tip of his boot he pointed in the direction
of the recumbent Pasha.

"Wha-at?" asked Platonov in a drawl, knitting his eyebrows.

"Or else you are her lover--it's all one ... What do they call this
duty here? Well, now, these same people for whom the women embroider
shirts and with whom they divide their honest earnings? ... Eh? ..."

Platonov looked at him with a heavy, intent gaze through his narrowed
lids.

"Listen," he said quietly, in a hoarse voice, slowly and ponderously
separating his words. "This isn't the first time that you're trying to
pick a quarrel with me. But, in the first place, I see that despite
your sober appearance you are exceedingly and badly drunk; and, in the
second place, I spare you for the sake of your comrades. However, I
warn you, that if you think of talking that way to me again, take your
eyeglasses off."

"What's this stuff?" exclaimed Boris, raising his shoulders high and
snorting through his nose. "What eyeglasses? Why eyeglasses?" But
mechanically, with two extended fingers, he fixed the bow of the
PINCE-NEZ on the bridge of his nose.

"Because I'm going to hit you, and the pieces may get in your eye,"
said the reporter unconcernedly.

Despite the unexpectedness of such a turn of the quarrel, nobody
started laughing. Only Little White Manka oh'd in astonishment and
clapped her hands. Jennie, with avid impatience, shifted her eyes from
one to the other.

"Well, now! I'll give you change back myself so's you won't like it!"
roughly, altogether boyishly, cried out Sobashnikov. "Only it's not
worth while mussing one's hands with every ..." he wanted to add a new
invective, but decided not to, "with every ... And besides, comrades, I
do not intend to stay here any longer. I am too well brought up to be
hail-fellow-well-met with such persons."

He rapidly and haughtily walked to the door.

It was necessary for him to pass almost right up against Platonov, who,
out of the corner of his eye, animal-like, was watching his every
movement. For a moment in the mind of the student flashed a desire to
strike Platonov unexpectedly, from the side, and jump away--the
comrades would surely part them and not allow a fight. But immediately,
almost without looking at the reporter, with some sort of deep,
unconscious instinct, he saw an