o thought
and dropped her knitting-needles on her knee.

And Aratoff until nightfall kept again and again beginning, with the
same vexation, the same ire as before, to think about "the gipsy," the
appointed tryst, to which he certainly would not go! During the night
also she worried him. He kept constantly seeing her eyes, now narrowed,
now widely opened, with their importunate gaze riveted directly on him,
and those impassive features with their imperious expression.

On the following morning he again kept expecting Kupfer, for some reason
or other; he came near writing him a letter ... however, he did
nothing ... but spent most of his time pacing to and fro in his study.
Not for one instant did he even admit to himself the thought that he
would go to that stupid "rendezvous" ... and at half-past four, after
having swallowed his dinner in haste, he suddenly donned his overcoat
and pulling his cap down on his brows, he stole out of the house without
letting his aunt see him and wended his way to the Tver boulevard.

VII

Aratoff found few pedestrians on the boulevard. The weather was raw and
quite cold. He strove not to think of what he was doing. He forced
himself to turn his attention to all the objects he came across and
pretended to assure himself that he had come out to walk precisely like
the other people.... The letter of the day before was in his
side-pocket, and he was uninterruptedly conscious of its presence. He
walked the length of the boulevard a couple of times, darting keen
glances at every feminine form which approached him, and his heart
thumped, thumped violently.... He began to feel tired, and sat down on a
bench. And suddenly the idea occurred to him: "Come now, what if that
letter was not written by her but by some one else, by some other
woman?" In point of fact, that should have made no difference to him ...
and yet he was forced to admit to himself that he did not wish this. "It
would be very stupid," he thought, "still more stupid than _that_!" A
nervous restlessness began to take possession of him; he began to feel
chilly, not outwardly but inwardly. Several times he drew out his watch
from his waistcoat pocket, glanced at the face, put it back again,--and
every time forgot how many minutes were lacking to five o'clock. It
seemed to him as though every one who passed him stared at him in a
peculiar manner, surveying him with a certain sneering surprise and
curiosity. A wretched litt