“Don’t quite forget us. You know you are always welcome. Besides, it is far more healthy for you to spend your evenings with us than to sit drinking with that dreadful Nasanski. Also, don’t forget we stand on no ceremony with you.”
He heard her last words as it were in a dream, but he did not realize their meaning till he reached the street.
“Yes, that is true indeed; they don’t stand on ceremony with me,” whispered he to himself with the painful bitterness in which young and conceited persons of his age are so prone to indulge.
V
ROMASHOV was still standing on the doorstep. The night was rather warm, but very dark. He began to grope his way cautiously with his hand on the palings whilst waiting until his eyes got accustomed to the darkness. Suddenly the kitchendoor of Nikoläiev’s dwelling was thrown open, and a broad stream of misty yellow light escaped. Heavy steps sounded in the muddy street, the next moment Romashov heard Stepan’s, the Nikoläievs’ servant’s, angry voice—
“He comes here every blessed day, and the deuce knows what he comes for.”
Another soldier, whose voice Romashov did not recognize, answered indifferently with a lazy, long-drawn yawn—
“What business can it be of yours, my dear fellow? Good-night, Stepan.”
“Good-night to you, Baúlin; look in when you like.”
Romashov’s hands suddenly clung to the palings. An unendurable feeling of shame made him blush, in spite of the darkness. All his body broke out into a perspiration, and, in his back and the soles of his feet, he felt the sting of a thousand red-hot, pointed nails. “This chapter’s closed; even the soldiers laugh at me,” thought he with indescribable pain. Directly afterwards it flashed on his mind that that very evening, in many expressions used, in the tones of the replies, in glances exchanged between man and wife, he had seen a number of trifles that he had hitherto not noticed, but which he now thought testified only to contempt of him, and ridicule, impatience and indignation at the persistent visits of that insufferable guest.