hiding our relations from the servants and
our friends costs us from ten to fifteen francs a day, as I have
to have a separate room. What's the object of it?"

I felt as though a sharp stone had been turned round in my chest.
There was no uncertainty now; it was all clear to me. I turned cold
all over, and at once made a resolution to give up seeing them, to
run away from them, to go home at once. . . .

"To get on terms with a woman is easy enough," Lubkov went on. "You
have only to undress her; but afterwards what a bore it is, what a
silly business!"

When I counted over the money I received he said:

"If you don't lend me a thousand francs, I am faced with complete
ruin. Your money is the only resource left to me."

I gave him the money, and he at once revived and began laughing
about his uncle, a queer fish, who could never keep his address
secret from his wife. When I reached the hotel I packed and paid
my bill. I had still to say good-bye to Ariadne.

I knocked at the door.

"Entrez!"

In her room was the usual morning disorder: tea-things on the table,
an unfinished roll, an eggshell; a strong overpowering reek of
scent. The bed had not been made, and it was evident that two had
slept in it.

Ariadne herself had only just got out of bed and was now with her
hair down in a flannel dressing-jacket.

I said good-morning to her, and then sat in silence for a minute
while she tried to put her hair tidy, and then I asked her, trembling
all over:

"Why . . . why . . . did you send for me here?"

Evidently she guessed what I was thinking; she took me by the hand
and said:

"I want you to be here, you are so pure."

I felt ashamed of my emotion, of my trembling. And I was afraid I
might begin sobbing, too! I went out without saying another word,
and within an hour I was sitting in the train. All the journey, for
some reason, I imagined Ariadne with child, and she seemed disgusting
to me, and all the women I saw in the trains and at the stations
looked to me, for some reason, as if they too were with child, and
they too seemed disgusting and pitiable. I was in the position of
a greedy, passionate miser who should suddenly discover that all
his gold coins were false. The pure, gracious images which my
imagination, warmed by love, had cherished for so long, my plans,
my hopes, my memories, my ideas of love and of woman--all now
were jeering and putting out their tongues at me. "Ariadne," I kept
asking