»Just imagine! A Browning with three clips and, like a fool, he gave it up!« the little officer was relating. »I can't understand that!«
»You, Misha, will never understand this.«
»For, after all, they are no cowards!«
»You, Misha, are an idealist, and the milk has not yet dried on your lips.«
»Samson and Delilah,« one short snuffling officer said ironically; he had a little drooping nose and thin whiskers combed back and upwards.
»Oh Delilah! What a smiler!«
They laughed.
The superintendent, smiling pleasantly and rubbing his flabby red nose downwards, suddenly approached the man and stood as if to screen him from the officers with his own carcase encased in the loose hanging coat; and he murmured under his breath, rolling his eyes wildly:
»Shameful, sir! You might at least have put your drawers on, sir! Shameful! And a hero, too? Involved with a prostitute ... with this carrion-flesh? What will your comrades say of you,—eh, you cur?«
Liuba, stretching her naked neck, heard him. They were together now, side by side, these three plain truths of life, the corrupt old drunkard who yearned for heroes, the dissolute woman into whose soul some scattered seeds of purpose and self-denial had fallen—and the man. After the superintendent's words, he paled slightly, and seemed to wish to say something—but changed his mind and smiled, and went on swinging that hairy leg.