Meditating, over my morning cup of tea, upon all the occurrences of the preceding day, I decided to go at once to Elyòna Ivànovna, on my way to the Department, as, indeed, I was bound to do in my character of domestic friend.
In a tiny room adjoining her bedroom, and called the “little drawing-room” (though their “big drawing-room” was little enough), on a little fancy sofa beside a little tea-table, in a half-ethereal morning négligé, sat Elyòna Ivànovna, sipping coffee out of a little cup, in which she dipped the minutest of rusks. She looked distractingly pretty, but also, I thought, somewhat pensive.
“Ah, it is you, bad boy!” she said, greeting me with an absent smile; “sit down, you frivolous person, and drink some coffee. Well, what did you do yesterday? Were you at the masked ball?”
“Were you? I never go ... and then I spent the evening visiting our captive.”
“Who? what captive?... Ah, yes, of course! Poor fellow! Well, how is he? Very blue? By the by, I wanted to ask you ... I suppose I can claim a divorce now?”
“Divorce!” I ejaculated indignantly, and nearly upset my coffee. “It’s that black-whiskered fellow,” I said to myself, inwardly fuming.
There existed a certain person with black whiskers (he served in the Building Department) who had taken to visiting at the house rather too often, and who greatly amused Elyòna Ivànovna. I acknowledge that I detested him, and there could be no question that he had already contrived to see her, either here or at the masked ball, and had been talking all sorts of nonsense to her.
“Well, you know,” Elyòna Ivànovna began hastily, as if she had learned her speech by heart, “very likely he’ll stop in the crocodile all his life, and never come back at all, and what’s the use of my sitting here and waiting for him? One’s husband ought to live at home, not in a crocodile!”
“But then this is an unforeseen case,” I began, in very natural agitation.