“You don’t say so!” cried his mother, rocking with long shrieks of laughter. “You don’t say so! How like his father he is!”
Volodia jumped back, and rushed out into the fresh air.
“How can they all talk about it?” he groaned, throwing up his arms and staring with horror at the sky. “Aloud, and in cold blood, too! And mother laughed! Mother! Oh, God, why did you give me such a mother? Oh, why?”
But enter the house he must, happen what might. He walked three times round the garden, and then, feeling more composed, he went in.
“Why didn’t you come in to tea on time?” asked Madame Shumikin sternly.
“Excuse me, it—it is time for me to go—” Volodia stammered, without raising his eyes. “Mother, it is eight o’clock!”
“Go along by yourself, dear,” answered his mother languidly. “I am spending the night here with Lily. Good-by, my boy, come, let me kiss you.”
She kissed her son and said in French:
“He reminds one a little of Lermontov, doesn’t he?”
Volodia managed to take leave of the company somehow without looking any one in the face, and ten minutes later he was striding along the road to the station, glad to be off at last. He now no longer felt frightened or ashamed, and could breathe deeply and freely once more.