s, but they danced about, broke
up and flickered. When these images vanished altogether from the
broad dark background which every man sees when he closes his eyes,
he began to hear hurried footsteps, the rustle of skirts, the sound
of a kiss and--an intense groundless joy took possession of him
. . . . Abandoning himself to this joy, he heard the orderly return
and announce that there was no beer. Lobytko was terribly indignant,
and began pacing up and down again.

"Well, isn't he an idiot?" he kept saying, stopping first before
Ryabovitch and then before Merzlyakov. "What a fool and a dummy a
man must be not to get hold of any beer! Eh? Isn't he a scoundrel?"

"Of course you can't get beer here," said Merzlyakov, not removing
his eyes from the "Vyestnik Evropi."

"Oh! Is that your opinion?" Lobytko persisted. "Lord have mercy
upon us, if you dropped me on the moon I'd find you beer and women
directly! I'll go and find some at once. . . . You may call me an
impostor if I don't!"

He spent a long time in dressing and pulling on his high boots,
then finished smoking his cigarette in silence and went out.

"Rabbek, Grabbek, Labbek," he muttered, stopping in the outer room.
"I don't care to go alone, damn it all! Ryabovitch, wouldn't you
like to go for a walk? Eh?"

Receiving no answer, he returned, slowly undressed and got into
bed. Merzlyakov sighed, put the "Vyestnik Evropi" away, and put out
the light.

"H'm! . . ." muttered Lobytko, lighting a cigarette in the dark.

Ryabovitch pulled the bed-clothes over his head, curled himself up
in bed, and tried to gather together the floating images in his
mind and to combine them into one whole. But nothing came of it.
He soon fell asleep, and his last thought was that some one had
caressed him and made him happy--that something extraordinary,
foolish, but joyful and delightful, had come into his life. The
thought did not leave him even in his sleep.

When he woke up the sensations of oil on his neck and the chill of
peppermint about his lips had gone, but joy flooded his heart just
as the day before. He looked enthusiastically at the window-frames,
gilded by the light of the rising sun, and listened to the movement
of the passers-by in the street. People were talking loudly close
to the window. Lebedetsky, the commander of Ryabovitch's battery,
who had only just overtaken the brigade, was talking to his sergeant
at the top of his voice, being always accustomed to s