sked:

"They laughed at me?"

"To these men you were laughable--you and your love and Turgenev;
they said your head was full of him. And if we both die at once in
despair, that will amuse them, too; they will make a funny anecdote
of it and tell it at your requiem service. But why talk of them?"
I said impatiently. "We must get away from here--I cannot stay
here one minute longer."

She began crying again, while I walked to the piano and sat down.

"What are we waiting for?" I asked dejectedly. "It's two o'clock."

"I am not waiting for anything," she said. "I am utterly lost."

"Why do you talk like that? We had better consider together what
we are to do. Neither you nor I can stay here. Where do you intend
to go?"

Suddenly there was a ring at the bell. My heart stood still. Could
it be Orlov, to whom perhaps Kukushkin had complained of me? How
should we meet? I went to open the door. It was Polya. She came in
shaking the snow off her pelisse, and went into her room without
saying a word to me. When I went back to the drawing-room, Zinaida
Fyodorovna, pale as death, was standing in the middle of the room,
looking towards me with big eyes.

"Who was it?" she asked softly.

"Polya," I answered.

She passed her hand over her hair and closed her eyes wearily.

"I will go away at once," she said. "Will you be kind and take me
to the Petersburg Side? What time is it now?"

"A quarter to three."

XIV

When, a little afterwards, we went out of the house, it was dark
and deserted in the street. Wet snow was falling and a damp wind
lashed in one's face. I remember it was the beginning of March; a
thaw had set in, and for some days past the cabmen had been driving
on wheels. Under the impression of the back stairs, of the cold,
of the midnight darkness, and the porter in his sheepskin who had
questioned us before letting us out of the gate, Zinaida Fyodorovna
was utterly cast down and dispirited. When we got into the cab and
the hood was put up, trembling all over, she began hurriedly saying
how grateful she was to me.

"I do not doubt your good-will, but I am ashamed that you should
be troubled," she muttered. "Oh, I understand, I understand. . . .
When Gruzin was here to-day, I felt that he was lying and concealing
something. Well, so be it. But I am ashamed, anyway, that you should
be troubled."

She still had her doubts. To dispel them finally, I asked the cabman
to drive through Sergievsky Street; sto