ngs
which you do not understand? I will not have you do it! Hold your
tongue!" At this point I had to hold my own, for I did not know what
to say next, and was, moreover, out of breath with excitement. At first
Dubkoff was taken aback, but presently he tried to laugh it off, and to
take it as a joke. Finally I was surprised to see him look crestfallen,
and lower his eyes.

"I NEVER laugh at you or your feelings. It is merely my way of
speaking," he said evasively.

"Indeed?" I cried; yet the next moment I felt ashamed of myself and
sorry for him, since his flushed, downcast face had in it no other
expression than one of genuine pain.

"What is the matter with you?" said Woloda and Dimitri simultaneously.
"No one was trying to insult you."

"Yes, he DID try to insult me!" I replied.

"What an extraordinary fellow your brother is!" said Dubkoff to Woloda.
At that moment he was passing out of the door, and could not have heard
what I said. Possibly I should have flung myself after him and offered
him further insult, had it not been that just at that moment the waiter
who had witnessed my encounter with Kolpikoff handed me my greatcoat,
and I at once quietened down--merely making such a pretence of having
had a difference with Dimitri as was necessary to make my sudden
appeasement appear nothing extraordinary. Next day, when I met Dubkoff
at Woloda's, the quarrel was not raked up, yet he and I still addressed
each other as "you," and found it harder than ever to look one another
in the face.

The remembrance of my scene with Kolpikoff--who, by the way, never
sent me "de ses nouvelles," either the following day or any day
afterwards--remained for years a keen and unpleasant memory. Even so
much as five years after it had happened I would begin fidgeting and
muttering to myself whenever I remembered the unavenged insult, and was
fain to comfort myself with the satisfaction of recollecting the sort
of young fellow I had shown myself to be in my subsequent affair with
Dubkoff. In fact, it was only later still that I began to regard the
matter in another light, and both to recall with comic appreciation my
passage of arms with Kolpikoff, and to regret the undeserved affront
which I had offered my good friend Dubkoff.

When, at a later hour on the evening of the dinner, I told Dimitri of
my affair with Kolpikoff, whose exterior I described in detail, he was
astounded.

"That is the very man!" he cried. "Don't you know