“Good-night. I shall call to-morrow.”
“And I have noticed it all the evening, really quite delirious!” continued Pavel Pavlovitch, licking his lips, as it were, with satisfaction as he pursued this theme. “I am really quite ashamed that I should have allowed myself to be so awkward as to agitate you. Well, well; I'm going! Now you must lie down at once and go to sleep.”
“You haven't told me where you live,” shouted Velchaninoff after him as he left the room.
“Oh, didn't I? Pokrofsky Hotel.”
Pavel Pavlovitch was out on the stairs now.
“Stop!” cried Velchaninoff, once more. “You are not ‘running away,’ are you?”
“How do you mean, ‘running away?’ ” asked Pavel Pavlovitch, turning round at the third step, and grinning back at him, with his eyes staring very wide open.
Instead of replying, Velchaninoff banged the door fiercely, locked and bolted it, and went fuming back into his room. Arrived there, he spat on the ground, as though to get rid of the taste of something loathsome.
He then stood motionless for at least five minutes, in the centre of the room; after which he threw himself upon his bed, and fell asleep in an instant.
The forgotten candle burned itself out in its socket.