ter the departing Yuzitch, who came back a few minutes later, and
gave Kovroff forty rubles. Kovroff counted them, and put twenty in his
pocket, returning the remainder in silence, but with a gentlemanly
smile, to Bodlevski.

"Fair exchange is no robbery," he said, giving Bodlevski the passport
of the college assessor's widow. "Now that old rascal Pacomius may get
to work."

"What is there to do?" laughed Pacomius; "the passport will do very
well. So let us have a little glass, and then a little game of cards."

"We are going to know each other better; I like your face, so I hope
we shall make friends," said Kovroff, again shaking hands with
Bodlevski. "Now let us go and have some wine. You will tell me over
our glasses what you want the passport for, and on account of your
frankness about the watch, I am well disposed to you. Lieutenant
Sergei Kovroff gives you his word of honor on that. I also can be
magnanimous," he concluded, and the new friends accompanied by the
whole gang went out to the large hall.

There began a scene of revelry that lasted till long after midnight.
Bodlevski, feeling his side pocket to see if the passport was still
there, at last left the hall, bewildered, as though under a spell. He
felt a kind of gloomy satisfaction; he was possessed by this
satisfaction, by the uncertainty of what Natasha could have thought
out, by the question how it would all turn out, and by the conviction
that his first crime had already been committed. All these feelings
lay like lead on his heart, while in his ears resounded the wild songs
of the Cave.

V

THE KEYS OF THE OLD PRINCESS

It was nine o'clock in the evening. Natasha lit the night lamp in the
bedroom of the old Princess Chechevinski, and went silently into the
dressing room to prepare the soothing powders which the doctors had
prescribed for her, before going to sleep.

The old princess was still very weak. Although her periods of
unconsciousness had not returned, she was still subject to paroxysms
of hysteria. At times she sank into forgetfulness, then started
nervously, sometimes trembling in every limb. The thought of the blow
of her daughter's flight never left her for a moment.

Natasha had just taken the place of the day nurse. It was her turn to
wait on the patient until midnight. Silence always reigned in the
house of the princess, and now that she was ill the silence was
intensified tenfold. Everyone walked on tiptoe, and spoke in