d sensed those broad hands, lying
quietly on the table, that obdurately bowed head with its broad
forehead, and all the ungainly, alert, powerful body of his foe, so
neligently hunched up and spread out on the chair, but ready at any
second for a quick and terrific blow. And Sobashnikov walked out into
the corridor, loudly banging the door after him.

"Good riddance to bad rubbish," said Jennie after him in a mocking
patter. "Tamarochka, pour me out some more cognac."

But the lanky student Petrovsky got up from his place and considered it
necessary to defend Sobashnikov.

"Just as you wish, gentlemen; this is a matter of your personal view,
but out of principle I go together with Boris. Let him be not right and
so on, we can express censure to him in our own intimate company, but
when an insult has been rendered our comrade--I can't remain here. I am
going away."

"Oh, my God!" And Lichonin nervously and vexedly scratched his temple.
"Boris behaved himself all the time in the highest degree vulgarly,
rudely and foolishly. What sort of corporate honour do you think this
is? A collective walk-out from editorial offices, from political
meetings, from brothels. We aren't officers to screen the foolishness
of each comrade."

"All the same, just as you wish, but I am going away out of a sense of
solidarity!" said Petrovsky importantly and walked out.

"May the earth be as down upon you!" Jennie sent after him.

But how tortuous and dark the ways of the human soul! Both of
them--Sobashnikov as well as Petrovsky--acted in their indignation
rather sincerely, but the first only half so, while the second only a
quarter in all. Sobashnikov, despite his intoxication and wrath, still
had knocking at the door of his mind the alluring thought that now it
would be more convenient and easier before his comrades to call out
Jennka on the quiet and to be alone with her. While Petrovsky, with
exactly the same aim, went after Sobashnikov in order to make a loan of
three roubles from him. In the general drawing room they made things up
between them, and after ten minutes Zociya, the housekeeper, shoved in
her little, squinting, pink, cunning face through the half-open door of
the private room.

"Jennechka," she called, "go, they have brought your linen, go count
it. And you, Niura, the actor begs to come for just a minute, to drink
some champagne. He's with Henrietta and Big Manya."

The precipitate and incongruous quarrel of Plat