ewhat hoarse from sleep. "Why, I was waiting for you and waiting,
and even became angry. And after that I fell asleep and all night long
saw you in my sleep. Come to me, my baby, my lil' precious!" She drew
him to her, breast against breast.

Lichonin almost did not resist; he was all atremble, as from a chill,
and meaninglessly repeating in a galloping whisper with chattering
teeth:

"No, now, Liuba, don't ... Really, don't do that, Liuba ... Ah, let's
drop this, Liuba ... Don't torture me. I won't vouch for myself ... Let
me alone, now, Liuba, for God's sake! ..."

"My-y little silly!" she exclaimed in a laughing, joyous voice. "Come
to me, my joy!"--and, overcoming the last, altogether insignificant
opposition, she pressed his mouth to hers and kissed him hard and
warmly--kissed him sincerely, perhaps for the first and last time in
her life.

"Oh, you scoundrel! What am I doing?" declaimed some honest, prudent,
and false body in Lichonin.

"Well, now? Are you eased up a bit?" asked Liubka kindly, kissing
Lichonin's lips for the last time. "Oh, you, my little student! ..."

CHAPTER XII.

With pain at soul, with malice and repulsion toward himself and Liubka,
and, it would seem, toward all the world, Lichonin without undressing
flung himself upon the wooden, lopsided, sagging divan and even gnashed
his teeth from the smarting shame. Sleep would not come to him, while
his thoughts revolved around this fool action--as he himself called the
carrying off of Liubka,--in which an atrocious vaudeville had been so
disgustingly intertwined with a deep drama. "It's all one," he
stubbornly repeated to himself. "Once I have given my promise, I'll see
the business through to the end. And, of course, that which has
occurred just now will never, never be repeated! My God, who hasn't
fallen, giving in to a momentary laxity of the nerves? Some philosopher
or other has expressed a deep, remarkable truth, when he affirmed that
the value of the human soul may be known by the depth of its fall and
the height of its flight. But still, the devil take the whole of this
idiotical day and that equivocal reasoner--the reporter Platonov, and
his own--Lichonin's--absurd outburst of chivalry! Just as though, in
reality, this had not taken place in real life, but in Chernishevski's
novel, What's to be done? And how, devil take it, with what eyes will I
look upon her tomorrow?"

His head was on fire; his eyelids were smarting, his l