I am," he said, smiling; he felt agonisingly ashamed, and he
felt others were ashamed in his presence. "Fancy such a thing
happening," he said, sitting down. "I was sitting here, and all of
a sudden, do you know, I felt a terrible piercing pain in my side
. . . unendurable, my nerves could not stand it, and . . . and it
led to this silly performance. This is the age of nerves; there is
no help for it."

At supper he drank some wine, and, from time to time, with an abrupt
sigh rubbed his side as though to suggest that he still felt the
pain. And no one, except Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, believed him, and
he saw that.

After nine o'clock they went for a walk on the boulevard. Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna, afraid that Kirilin would speak to her, did her best
to keep all the time beside Marya Konstantinovna and the children.
She felt weak with fear and misery, and felt she was going to be
feverish; she was exhausted and her legs would hardly move, but she
did not go home, because she felt sure that she would be followed
by Kirilin or Atchmianov or both at once. Kirilin walked behind her
with Nikodim Alexandritch, and kept humming in an undertone:

"I don't al-low people to play with me! I don't al-low it."

From the boulevard they went back to the pavilion and walked along
the beach, and looked for a long time at the phosphorescence on the
water. Von Koren began telling them why it looked phosphorescent.

XIV

"It's time I went to my _vint_. . . . They will be waiting for me,"
said Laevsky. "Good-bye, my friends."

"I'll come with you; wait a minute," said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and
she took his arm.

They said good-bye to the company and went away. Kirilin took leave
too, and saying that he was going the same way, went along beside
them.

"What will be, will be," thought Nadyezhda Fyodorovna. "So be
it. . . ."

And it seemed to her that all the evil memories in her head had
taken shape and were walking beside her in the darkness, breathing
heavily, while she, like a fly that had fallen into the inkpot, was
crawling painfully along the pavement and smirching Laevsky's side
and arm with blackness.

If Kirilin should do anything horrid, she thought, not he but she
would be to blame for it. There was a time when no man would have
talked to her as Kirilin had done, and she had torn up her security
like a thread and destroyed it irrevocably--who was to blame for
it? Intoxicated by her passions she had smiled at a complete str