stance, what cancer
is--what it is, what it comes from."

And Panaurov began to explain what cancer was. He was a specialist
on all scientific subjects, and explained from a scientific point
of view everything that was discussed. But he explained it all in
his own way. He had a theory of his own about the circulation of
the blood, about chemistry, about astronomy. He talked slowly,
softly, convincingly.

"It's beyond all conception," he pronounced in an imploring voice,
screwing up his eyes, sighing languidly, and smiling as graciously
as a king, and it was evident that he was very well satisfied with
himself, and never gave a thought to the fact that he was fifty.

"I am rather hungry," said Laptev. "I should like something savoury."

"Well, that can easily be managed."

Not long afterwards Laptev and his brother-in-law were sitting
upstairs in the dining-room having supper. Laptev had a glass of
vodka, and then began drinking wine. Panaurov drank nothing. He
never drank, and never gambled, yet in spite of that he had squandered
all his own and his wife's property, and had accumulated debts. To
squander so much in such a short time, one must have, not passions,
but a special talent. Panaurov liked dainty fare, liked a handsome
dinner service, liked music after dinner, speeches, bowing footmen,
to whom he would carelessly fling tips of ten, even twenty-five
roubles. He always took part in all lotteries and subscriptions,
sent bouquets to ladies of his acquaintance on their birthdays,
bought cups, stands for glasses, studs, ties, walking-sticks, scents,
cigarette-holders, pipes, lap-dogs, parrots, Japanese bric-a-brac,
antiques; he had silk nightshirts, and a bedstead made of ebony
inlaid with mother-of-pearl. His dressing-gown was a genuine Bokhara,
and everything was to correspond; and on all this there went every
day, as he himself expressed, "a deluge" of money.

At supper he kept sighing and shaking his head.

"Yes, everything on this earth has an end," he said softly, screwing
up his dark eyes. "You will fall in love and suffer. You will fall
out of love; you'll be deceived, for there is no woman who will not
deceive; you will suffer, will be brought to despair, and will be
faithless too. But the time will come when all this will be a memory,
and when you will reason about it coldly and look upon it as utterly
trivial. . . ."

Laptev, tired, a little drunk, looked at his handsome head, his
clipped black