"And now clear out!" squeaked the old man again. "Allow me. I'll bolt the door myself. I'll do it."
He drew his dressing-gown round him, opened the door, and cried:
"Now then, go along!"
Ilya stood in the frost before the closed door, and stared stupidly at it. He could not yet decide if all that he had just seen were reality, or a hateful dream. In one hand he held his cap, in the other the money Olympiada had given him. He stood there so long that he felt the frost round his head like a ring of ice, and his legs were stiff with cold. Then he put on his cap, put the money in his pocket, tucked his hands into the sleeves of his overcoat, drew in his shoulders, and went slowly down the street with bowed head. His heart seemed ice and in his head a couple of balls rolled here and there and knocked against his temples. Before his eyes swam the dusky face of the old man, the yellow skull illuminated by the cold lamp-light.
And the face of the old man smiled evilly, cunningly, triumphantly.
[XIII.]
On the day following his encounter with Olympiada's aged lover, Ilya walked to and fro along the main street of the town, slowly and silently. He did not call his wares as usual, but looked at his box gloomily, and hidden in his heart there lay immovable, a heavy leaden feeling. He never ceased to see before him the scornful face of the old man, Olympiada's calm blue eyes and the gesture with which she had given him the money. Sharp little snowflakes drove through the dry, frosty air, stinging his face like needles.
He had just passed a little shop, half-concealed in a niche between a church and the big house of a rich merchant. Over the entrance hung an old rusty sign with the inscription:
"Bureau de Change. W. G. Poluektov. Old gold and silver, ornaments for shrines, rarities of every kind, old coins."