d as fantastic pink, blue,
violet splotches, and the whiteness of their necks, bosoms and arms
flashed with a blinding, spicy, victorious splendour. Some one of the
comrades whispered something in the ear of one of these fantastic
figures. She ran up to Kolya and said:

"Listen, you good-looking little cadet, your comrades are saying, now,
that you're still innocent ... Let's go ... I'll teach you everything."

The phrase was said in a kindly manner; but this phrase the walls of
Anna Markovna's establishment had already heard several thousand times.
Further, that took place which it was so difficult and painful to
recall, that in the middle of his recollections Kolya grew tired, and
with an effort of the will turned back the imagination to something
else. He only remembered dimly the revolving and spreading circles from
the light of the lamp; persistent kisses; disconcerting contacts--then
a sudden sharp pain, from which one wanted both to die in enjoyment and
to cry out in terror; and then with wonder he saw his pale shaking
hands, which could not, somehow, button his clothes.

Of course, all men have experienced this primordial tristia post
coitus; but this great moral pain, very serious in its significance and
depth, passes very rapidly, remaining, however, with the majority for a
long time--sometimes for all life--in the form of wearisomeness and
awkwardness after certain moments. In a short while Kolya became
accustomed to it; grew bolder, became familiarized with woman, and
rejoiced very much over the fact that when he came into the
establishment, all the girls, and Verka before all, would call out:

"Jennechka, your lover has come!"

It was pleasant, in relating this to his comrades, to be plucking at an
imaginary moustache.

CHAPTER III.

It was still early--about nine--of a rainy August evening. The
illuminated drawing room in the house of Anna Markovna was almost
empty. Only near the very doors a young telegraph clerk was sitting,
his legs shyly and awkwardly squeezed under his chair, and was trying
to start with the thick-fleshed Katie that worldly, unconstrained
conversation which is laid down as the proper thing in polite society
at quadrille, during the intermissions between the figures of the
dance. And, also, the long-legged, aged Roly-Poly wandered over the
room, sitting down now next one girl, now another, and entertaining
them all with his fluent chatter.

When Kolya Gladishev walked