Woman."

With the air of an oracle, unshakable and austere, he spoke all sorts
of erotic balderdash and almost unexpectedly concluded:

"And so look, Liuba. The desire to love--it's the same as the desire to
eat, to drink, and to breathe the air." He would squeeze her thigh
hard, considerably above the knee; and she again, becoming confused and
not wishing to offend him, would try almost imperceptibly to move her
leg away gradually.

"Tell me, would it be offensive, now, for your sister, mother, or for
your husband, that you by chance had not dined at home, but had gone
into a restaurant or a cook-shop, and had there satisfied your hunger?
And so with love. No more, no less. A physiological enjoyment. Perhaps
more powerful, more keen, than all others, but that's all. Thus, for
example, now: I want you as a woman. While you ..."

"Oh, drop it, Mister," Liubka cut him short with vexation. "Well, what
are you harping on one and the same thing for all the time? Change your
act. You've been told: no and no. Don't you think I see what you're
trying to get at? But only I'll never agree to unfaithfulness, seeing
as how Vasilli Vasillievich is my benefactor, and I adore him with all
my soul... And you're even pretty disgusting to me with your nonsense."

Once he caused Liubka a great and scandalous hurt, and all because of
his theoretical first principles. As at the university they were
already for a long time talking about Lichonin's having saved a girl
from such and such a house; and that now he is taken up with her moral
regeneration; that rumour, naturally, also reached the studying girls,
who frequented the student circles. And so, none other than Simanovsky
once brought to Liubka two female medicos, one historian, and one
beginning poetess, who, by the way, was already writing critical essays
as well. He introduced them in the most serious and fool-like manner.

"Here," he said, stretching out his hand, now in the direction of the
guests, now of Liubka, "here, comrades, get acquainted. You, Liuba,
will find in them real friends, who will help you on your radiant path;
while you--comrades, Liza, Nadya, Sasha and Rachel--you will regard as
elder sisters a being who has just struggled out of that horrible
darkness into which the social structure places the modern woman."

He spoke not exactly so, perhaps; but in any case, approximately in
that manner. Liubka turned red, extended her hand, with all the fingers
clumsily