ch some papers
for Orlov. He opened the table-drawer, took the necessary papers,
and, rolling them up, told me to put them in the hall beside his
cap while he went in to see Zinaida Fyodorovna. She was lying on
the sofa in the drawing-room, with her arms behind her head. Five
or six days had already passed since Orlov went on his tour of
inspection, and no one knew when he would be back, but this time
she did not send telegrams and did not expect them. She did not
seem to notice the presence of Polya, who was still living with us.
"So be it, then," was what I read on her passionless and very pale
face. Like Orlov, she wanted to be unhappy out of obstinacy. To
spite herself and everything in the world, she lay for days together
on the sofa, desiring and expecting nothing but evil for herself.
Probably she was picturing to herself Orlov's return and the
inevitable quarrels with him; then his growing indifference to her,
his infidelities; then how they would separate; and perhaps these
agonising thoughts gave her satisfaction. But what would she have
said if she found out the actual truth?

"I love you, Godmother," said Gruzin, greeting her and kissing her
hand. "You are so kind! And so dear _George_ has gone away," he
lied. "He has gone away, the rascal!"

He sat down with a sigh and tenderly stroked her hand.

"Let me spend an hour with you, my dear," he said. "I don't want
to go home, and it's too early to go to the Birshovs'. The Birshovs
are keeping their Katya's birthday to-day. She is a nice child!"

I brought him a glass of tea and a decanter of brandy. He slowly
and with obvious reluctance drank the tea, and returning the glass
to me, asked timidly:

"Can you give me . . . something to eat, my friend? I have had no
dinner."

We had nothing in the flat. I went to the restaurant and brought
him the ordinary rouble dinner.

"To your health, my dear," he said to Zinaida Fyodorovna, and he
tossed off a glass of vodka. "My little girl, your godchild, sends
you her love. Poor child! she's rickety. Ah, children, children!"
he sighed. "Whatever you may say, Godmother, it is nice to be a
father. Dear _George_ can't understand that feeling."

He drank some more. Pale and lean, with his dinner-napkin over his
chest like a little pinafore, he ate greedily, and raising his
eyebrows, kept looking guiltily, like a little boy, first at Zinaida
Fyodorovna and then at me. It seemed as though he would have begun
crying if