. ."

"Mamma!" groaned Katya, not knowing where to hide her confusion at
the praises of the company.

Laevsky, too, looked at the report and praised it. Scripture, Russian
language, conduct, fives and fours, danced before his eyes, and all
this, mixed with the haunting refrain of "Friday," with the carefully
combed locks of Nikodim Alexandritch and the red cheeks of Katya,
produced on him a sensation of such immense overwhelming boredom
that he almost shrieked with despair and asked himself: "Is it
possible, is it possible I shall not get away?"

They put two card tables side by side and sat down to play post.
Laevsky sat down too.

"Friday . . . Friday . . ." he kept thinking, as he smiled and took
a pencil out of his pocket. "Friday. . . ."

He wanted to think over his position, and was afraid to think. It
was terrible to him to realise that the doctor had detected him in
the deception which he had so long and carefully concealed from
himself. Every time he thought of his future he would not let his
thoughts have full rein. He would get into the train and set off,
and thereby the problem of his life would be solved, and he did not
let his thoughts go farther. Like a far-away dim light in the fields,
the thought sometimes flickered in his mind that in one of the
side-streets of Petersburg, in the remote future, he would have to
have recourse to a tiny lie in order to get rid of Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna and pay his debts; he would tell a lie only once, and
then a completely new life would begin. And that was right: at the
price of a small lie he would win so much truth.

Now when by his blunt refusal the doctor had crudely hinted at his
deception, he began to understand that he would need deception not
only in the remote future, but to-day, and to-morrow, and in a
month's time, and perhaps up to the very end of his life. In fact,
in order to get away he would have to lie to Nadyezhda Fyodorovna,
to his creditors, and to his superiors in the Service; then, in
order to get money in Petersburg, he would have to lie to his mother,
to tell her that he had already broken with Nadyezhda Fyodorovna;
and his mother would not give him more than five hundred roubles,
so he had already deceived the doctor, as he would not be in a
position to pay him back the money within a short time. Afterwards,
when Nadyezhda Fyodorovna came to Petersburg, he would have to
resort to a regular series of deceptions, little and big, in order
to