"Really, you do not remember? But, à propos, if it does not inconvenience you, could you lend me one or two thousand francs? I have already telegraphed to St. Petersburg."
"I beg you, Nikolai, take two thousand-franc notes from the desk in my bed room. Here is the key."
Nikolai takes the key and goes in the adjoining room, the door of which, as his father notices not without vexation, he leaves open.
"So you no longer remember her!" goes on Kasin. "That is incomprehensible to me; you were quite wild about her, enthusiastic. I had never seen you thus before about a girl. I met her one evening at Njikitjin's, only one evening, but I remember her very well. She had, indeed, no incense for me; she saw and heard at that time nothing but Lensky. You must remember her. They called her Senta in the Njikitjin set."
"Have you found the money, Colia?" calls Lensky, irritably, to his son.
"At once, father. The lock is rusty. I--I made a mistake in the key."
"Now her name is Fräulein von Sankjéwitch, and she is the most intimate friend of my daughter," explains Kasin. "The strangest of all is that she has never said a word about you to Sonia. Young girls usually tell each other everything. And, as she fainted last winter at one of your concerts, she has evidently not forgotten you. And you, ungrateful one, is it really worth while to please you--to please you thus? All the music-mad ladies were beside themselves with jealousy. Besides--who knows?--if you see her again she will turn your head once more. She is more charming than ever, greatly changed, but grown prettier."
Then Nikolai enters and brings the money. Soon after, Kasin leaves. Nikolai politely accompanies him to the door, which he locks behind him. In what he now has to discuss with his father he does not wish to be disturbed.
"So that was it--that," he says, slowly, as he goes up to Lensky.
"I do not understand what you mean," stammers Lensky, uneasily, but his eyes fall before the accusing glance of his son.