“Roly-Poly!” Little White Manka cried after him, “Won’t you buy me candy for fifteen kopecks... Turkish Delight, fifteen kopecks’ worth. There, grab!”
Roly-Poly neatly caught in its flight the thrown fifteen-kopeck piece; made a comical curtsey and, pulling down the uniform cap with the green edging at a slant over his eyes, vanished.
The tall, old Henrietta walked up to the cadets, also asked for a smoke and, having yawned, said:
“If only you young people would dance a bit—for as it is the young ladies sit and sit, just croaking from weariness.”
“If you please, if you please!” agreed Kolya. “Play a waltz and something else of the sort.”
The musicians began to play. The girls started to whirl around with one another, ceremoniously as usual, with stiffened backs and with eyes modestly cast down.
Kolya Gladishev, who was very fond of dancing, could not hold out and invited Tamara; he knew even from the previous winter that she danced more lightly and skillfully than the rest. While he was twirling in the waltz, the stout head-conductor, skillfully making his way between the couples, slipped away unperceived through the drawing room. Kolya did not have a chance to notice him.
No matter how Verka pressed Petrov, she could not, in any way, drag him off his place. The recent light intoxication had by now gone entirely out of his head; and more and more horrible, and unrealizable, and monstrous did that for which he had come here seem to him. He might have gone away, saying that not a one here pleased him; have put the blame on a headache, or something; but he knew that Gladishev would not let him go; and mainly—it seemed unbearably hard to get up from his place and to walk a few steps by himself. And, besides that, he felt that he had not the strength to start talking of this with Kolya.
They finished dancing. Tamara and Gladishev again sat down side by side.
“Well, really, how is it that Jennechka isn’t coming by now?” asked Kolya impatiently.