splash of the sea, looked
at the sky studded with stars, and longed to make haste and end it
all, and get away from the cursed sensation of life, with its sea,
stars, men, fever.

"Only not in my home," she said coldly. "Take me somewhere else."

"Come to Muridov's. That's better."

"Where's that?"

"Near the old wall."

She walked quickly along the street and then turned into the
side-street that led towards the mountains. It was dark. There were
pale streaks of light here and there on the pavement, from the
lighted windows, and it seemed to her that, like a fly, she kept
falling into the ink and crawling out into the light again. At one
point he stumbled, almost fell down and burst out laughing.

"He's drunk," thought Nadyezhda Fyodorovna. "Never mind. . . . Never
mind. . . . So be it."

Atchmianov, too, soon took leave of the party and followed Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna to ask her to go for a row. He went to her house and
looked over the fence: the windows were wide open, there were no
lights.

"Nadyezhda Fyodorovna!" he called.

A moment passed, he called again.

"Who's there?" he heard Olga's voice.

"Is Nadyezhda Fyodorovna at home?"

"No, she has not come in yet."

"Strange . . . very strange," thought Atchmianov, feeling very
uneasy. "She went home. . . ."

He walked along the boulevard, then along the street, and glanced
in at the windows of Sheshkovsky's. Laevsky was sitting at the table
without his coat on, looking attentively at his cards.

"Strange, strange," muttered Atchmianov, and remembering Laevsky's
hysterics, he felt ashamed. "If she is not at home, where is she?"

He went to Nadyezhda Fyodorovna's lodgings again, and looked at the
dark windows.

"It's a cheat, a cheat . . ." he thought, remembering that, meeting
him at midday at Marya Konstantinovna's, she had promised to go in
a boat with him that evening.

The windows of the house where Kirilin lived were dark, and there
was a policeman sitting asleep on a little bench at the gate.
Everything was clear to Atchmianov when he looked at the windows
and the policeman. He made up his mind to go home, and set off in
that direction, but somehow found himself near Nadyezhda Fyodorovna's
lodgings again. He sat down on the bench near the gate and took off
his hat, feeling that his head was burning with jealousy and
resentment.

The clock in the town church only struck twice in the twenty-four
hours--at midday and midnight. Soon after