an laughing.

"How silly you are! Well, what do they all come for? Am I not also a
man? For, it seems, I'm at that age when in every man ripens... well, a
certain need... for woman. For I'm not going to occupy myself with all
sorts of nastiness!"

"Need? Only need? That means, just as for that chamber which stands
under my bed?"

"No, why so?" retorted Kolya, with a kindly laugh. "I liked you very
much... From the very first time... If you will, I'm even... a little
in love with you... at least, I never stayed with any of the others."

"Well, all right! But then, the first time, could it possibly have been
need?"

"No, perhaps, it wasn't need even; but somehow, vaguely, I wanted
woman... My friends talked me into it... Many had already gone here
before me... So then, I too..."

"But, now, weren't you ashamed the first time?"

Kolya became confused; all this interrogation was to him unpleasant,
oppressive. He felt, that this was not the empty, idle bed talk, so
well known to him, out of his small experience; but something else, of
more import.

"Let's say... not that I was ashamed... well, but still I felt kind of
awkward. I drank that time to get up courage."

Jennie again lay down on her side; leaned upon her elbow, and again
looked at him from time to time, near at hand and intently.

"But tell me, sweetie," she asked, in a barely audible voice, so that
the cadet with difficulty made out her words, "tell me one thing more;
but the fact of your paying money, these filthy two roubles--do you
understand?--paying them for love, so that I might caress, kiss you,
give all my body to you--didn't you feel ashamed to pay for that?
Never?"

"Oh, my God! What strange questions you put to me to-day! But then they
all pay money! Not I, then some one else would have paid--isn't it all
the same to you?"

"And have you been in love with any one, Kolya? Confess! Well, now, if
not in real earnest, then just so... at soul... Have you done any
courting? Brought little flowers of some sort... Strolled arm-in-arm
with her under the moon? Wasn't that so?"

"Well, yes," said Koiya in a sedate bass. "What follies don't happen in
one's youth! It's a matter anyone can understand..."

"Some sort of a little first cousin? An educated young lady? A boarding
school miss? A high school girl? ... There has been, hasn't there?"

"Well, yes, of course--everybody has them."

"Why, you wouldn't have touched her, would you? ... You'd