He felt warm after his brisk walk, and he unbuttoned his coat, but he recalled that he might catch a cold, so he buttoned his coat again, tugging with aversion at the loose, dangling button.
He stood in the same spot for a time, cast a helpless glance at the rows of lighted and dark windows and went on thinking:
“And the shaggy students are no doubt happy, and they believe her. Fools! I myself was a shaggy student—my hair was so long! I would not have cut my hair even now if it weren’t falling out. It is falling out rapidly. I’ll soon be bald. And I can’t wear a wig like—a spy.”
He lit a cigarette and felt that it was too much for him—the smoke was so bitter and unpleasant.
“Shall I go up and say to them: “Ladies and gentlemen, it was all a joke, just a joke’? But they will not believe me. They may even give me a thrashing.”
Mitrofan walked away about twenty steps and paused. It was growing cold.
He felt his light coat and the newspaper in his side pocket—and he was seized with a sense of bitterness. He felt so offended that he was on the point of crying. He could have gone home, had his dinner, drunk his tea and read his news-paper—and his soul would have been calm, cloudless; the copy books had already been corrected, and to-morrow, Saturday, there would be a whist party at the inspector’s house. And there, in her little room, his deaf grandmother was sitting and knitting socks—the dear, kind, devoted grandmother had already finished two pairs of socks for him. And the little oil lamp must be burning in her room—and he recalled that he had been scolding her for using too much oil. Where was he now? In some kind of a side street. In front of some house—in which there were shaggy students.
Two students came out of the lighted entrance of the house, slamming the door loudly, and turned in the direction of Mitrofan.
He came to himself somewhere on the boulevard and for a long time was unable to recognise the neighbourhood. It was quiet and deserted. A rain was falling. The students were not there. He smoked two cigarettes, one after another, and his hands were trembling when he lit the cigarettes....
“I must compose myself and look at the affair soberly,” he thought. “It isn’t so bad, after all. The deuce take that girl. She thinks that I am a spy; well, let her think what she pleases. But she does not know me. And the students didn’t see me either. I am no fool—I raised the collar of my coat!”