need to stand on ceremony with him. Tell
him so, or, if you don't, I give you my word I'll go to his office
and kick him downstairs, and I'll break off all acquaintance with
you. So you'd better know it."

"Well! To go with her or send her on beforehand will be more
convenient for him," said Samoylenko. "He'll be delighted indeed.
Well, goodbye."

He said good-bye affectionately and went out, but before shutting
the door after him, he looked round at Von Koren and, with a ferocious
face, said:

"It's the Germans who have ruined you, brother! Yes! The Germans!"

XII

Next day, Thursday, Marya Konstantinovna was celebrating the birthday
of her Kostya. All were invited to come at midday and eat pies, and
in the evening to drink chocolate. When Laevsky and Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna arrived in the evening, the zoologist, who was already
sitting in the drawing-room, drinking chocolate, asked Samoylenko:

"Have you talked to him?"

"Not yet."

"Mind now, don't stand on ceremony. I can't understand the insolence
of these people! Why, they know perfectly well the view taken by
this family of their cohabitation, and yet they force themselves
in here."

"If one is to pay attention to every prejudice," said Samoylenko,
"one could go nowhere."

"Do you mean to say that the repugnance felt by the masses for
illicit love and moral laxity is a prejudice?"

"Of course it is. It's prejudice and hate. When the soldiers see a
girl of light behaviour, they laugh and whistle; but just ask them
what they are themselves."

"It's not for nothing they whistle. The fact that girls strangle
their illegitimate children and go to prison for it, and that Anna
Karenin flung herself under the train, and that in the villages
they smear the gates with tar, and that you and I, without knowing
why, are pleased by Katya's purity, and that every one of us feels
a vague craving for pure love, though he knows there is no such
love--is all that prejudice? That is the one thing, brother, which
has survived intact from natural selection, and, if it were not for
that obscure force regulating the relations of the sexes, the
Laevskys would have it all their own way, and mankind would degenerate
in two years."

Laevsky came into the drawing-room, greeted every one, and shaking
hands with Von Koren, smiled ingratiatingly. He waited for a
favourable moment and said to Samoylenko:

"Excuse me, Alexandr Daviditch, I must say two words to you."

Samoyle