Availing herself of the teacher’s distractedness, the student girl lifted her hand in the torn glove from the platform rail—this made her braver—and she jumped off at the corner of a large street. At this point people got off and many others boarded the car, and a thin woman with a huge bundle obstructed the way, so that Mitrofan Krilov could not leave the car. He said “Please,” and tried to force himself out, but he got stuck in the doorway and ran to the other side of the car. But there the way was obstructed by the conductor and the red merchant.
“Let me pass,” Mitrofan Krilov shouted. “Conductor, what disgraceful business is this? I’ll make a complaint against you!”
“They didn’t hear you,” the conductor defended himself timidly. “Please, let him pass.”
Out of breath, he finally freed himself, jumped off so awkwardly that he almost fell down and he threatened the departing red light of the car with his fist.
Mitrofan overtook the girl in a small deserted street, into which he turned by intuition. She walked briskly and kept looking around, and when she noticed her pursuer she started to run, thus naïvely betraying her helplessness. Mitrofan also started to run after her, and now in the dark, unfamiliar, side street, where there were no other people but they, he and the girl, running, he was seized with a strange feeling; he felt that he was too much of a spy, and he even became frightened.
“I must end this matter at once,” he thought, running quickly, out of breath, but, for some reason, not daring to run at full speed.
At the entrance of a many storied house the student girl stopped, and while she was tugging at the knob of the heavy door Mitrofan Krilov overtook her and looked at her face with a generous smile in order to show her that the joke was ended, and that all was well. But breathing with difficulty, she passed into the half opened door, hurling at his smiling face:
“Scoundrel!”
And she disappeared. Through the glass her silhouette flashed—and then she disappeared completely. Still smiling generously, Mitrofan touched the cold knob of the door, made an attempt to open it, but in the hallway, under the staircase, he saw the porter’s galoons, and he walked away slowly. He stopped a few steps away and for about two minutes stood shrugging his shoulders. He adjusted his spectacles with dignity, threw his head back and thought:
“How stupid. She did not allow me to say a word, but scolded me at once. The nasty girl could not understand that it was all a joke. I was doing it all for her own sake, while she—As if I needed her with her papers. Break your neck as much as you please. I suppose she is sitting now and telling all sorts of students, all sorts of long-haired students, how a spy was pursuing her. And they are sighing. The idiots! I am a university graduate myself, and am no worse than you are.”