chest and throat were choking,
as they had been the night before with laughter.

Samoylenko came in in his shirt-sleeves, crimson and perspiring
from the stifling kitchen.

"Ah, you here?" he said. "Good-morning, my dear boy. Have you had
dinner? Don't stand on ceremony. Have you had dinner?"

"Alexandr Daviditch," said Laevsky, standing up, "though I did
appeal to you to help me in a private matter, it did not follow
that I released you from the obligation of discretion and respect
for other people's private affairs."

"What's this?" asked Samoylenko, in astonishment.

"If you have no money," Laevsky went on, raising his voice and
shifting from one foot to the other in his excitement, "don't give
it; refuse it. But why spread abroad in every back street that my
position is hopeless, and all the rest of it? I can't endure such
benevolence and friend's assistance where there's a shilling-worth
of talk for a ha'p'orth of help! You can boast of your benevolence
as much as you please, but no one has given you the right to gossip
about my private affairs!"

"What private affairs?" asked Samoylenko, puzzled and beginning to
be angry. "If you've come here to be abusive, you had better clear
out. You can come again afterwards!"

He remembered the rule that when one is angry with one's neighbour,
one must begin to count a hundred, and one will grow calm again;
and he began rapidly counting.

"I beg you not to trouble yourself about me," Laevsky went on.
"Don't pay any attention to me, and whose business is it what I do
and how I live? Yes, I want to go away. Yes, I get into debt, I
drink, I am living with another man's wife, I'm hysterical, I'm
ordinary. I am not so profound as some people, but whose business
is that? Respect other people's privacy."

"Excuse me, brother," said Samoylenko, who had counted up to
thirty-five, "but . . ."

"Respect other people's individuality!" interrupted Laevsky. "This
continual gossip about other people's affairs, this sighing and
groaning and everlasting prying, this eavesdropping, this friendly
sympathy . . . damn it all! They lend me money and make conditions
as though I were a schoolboy! I am treated as the devil knows what!
I don't want anything," shouted Laevsky, staggering with excitement
and afraid that it might end in another attack of hysterics. "I
shan't get away on Saturday, then," flashed through his mind. "I
want nothing. All I ask of you is to spare me your protecti