ling as though he were not
himself, but his double, and did many things which he would never
have brought himself to do before. He went three or four times to
the club with the doctor, had supper with him, and offered him money
for house-building. He even visited Panaurov at his other establishment.
It somehow happened that Panaurov invited him to dinner, and without
thinking, Laptev accepted. He was received by a lady of five-and-thirty.
She was tall and thin, with hair touched with grey, and black
eyebrows, apparently not Russian. There were white patches of powder
on her face. She gave him a honeyed smile and pressed his hand
jerkily, so that the bracelets on her white hands tinkled. It seemed
to Laptev that she smiled like that because she wanted to conceal
from herself and from others that she was unhappy. He also saw two
little girls, aged five and three, who had a marked likeness to
Sasha. For dinner they had milk-soup, cold veal, and chocolate. It
was insipid and not good; but the table was splendid, with gold
forks, bottles of Soyer, and cayenne pepper, an extraordinary bizarre
cruet-stand, and a gold pepper-pot.

It was only as he was finishing the milk-soup that Laptev realised
how very inappropriate it was for him to be dining there. The lady
was embarrassed, and kept smiling, showing her teeth. Panaurov
expounded didactically what being in love was, and what it was due
to.

"We have in it an example of the action of electricity," he said
in French, addressing the lady. "Every man has in his skin microscopic
glands which contain currents of electricity. If you meet with a
person whose currents are parallel with your own, then you get
love."

When Laptev went home and his sister asked him where he had been
he felt awkward, and made no answer.

He felt himself in a false position right up to the time of the
wedding. His love grew more intense every day, and Yulia seemed to
him a poetic and exalted creature; but, all the same, there was no
mutual love, and the truth was that he was buying her and she was
selling herself. Sometimes, thinking things over, he fell into
despair and asked himself: should he run away? He did not sleep for
nights together, and kept thinking how he should meet in Moscow the
lady whom he had called in his letters "a certain person," and what
attitude his father and his brother, difficult people, would take
towards his marriage and towards Yulia. He was afraid that his
father woul