“Take it,” he said, and thrust a hundred-rouble note into his hand.

“You’ve no need to be angry, Kolya,” said Samoylenko mildly, folding up the note. “I quite understand you, but … you must put yourself in my place.”

“You are an old woman, that’s what you are.”

The deacon burst out laughing.

“Hear my last request, Alexandr Daviditch,” said Von Koren hotly. “When you give that scoundrel the money, make it a condition that he takes his lady with him, or sends her on ahead, and don’t give it him without. There’s no need to stand on ceremony with him. Tell him so, or, if you don’t, I give you my word I’ll go to his office and kick him downstairs, and I’ll break off all acquaintance with you. So you’d better know it.”

“Well! To go with her or send her on beforehand will be more convenient for him,” said Samoylenko. “He’ll be delighted indeed. Well, good-bye.”

He said good-bye affectionately and went out, but before shutting the door after him, he looked round at Von Koren and, with a ferocious face, said:

“It’s the Germans who have ruined you, brother! Yes! The Germans!”

XII

Next day, Thursday, Marya Konstantinovna was celebrating the birthday of her Kostya. All were invited to come at midday and eat pies, and in the evening to drink chocolate. When Laevsky and Nadyezhda Fyodorovna arrived in the evening, the zoologist, who was already sitting in the drawing-room, drinking chocolate, asked Samoylenko:

“Have you talked to him?”

“Not yet.”

“Mind now, don’t stand on ceremony. I can’t understand the insolence of these people! Why, they know perfectly well the view taken by this family of their cohabitation, and yet they force themselves in here.”

“If one is to pay attention to every prejudice,” said Samoylenko, “one could go nowhere.”

“Do you mean to say that the repugnance felt by the masses for illicit love and moral laxity is a prejudice?”

“Of course it is. It’s prejudice and hate. When the soldiers see a girl of light behaviour, they laugh and whistle; but just ask them what they are themselves.”

“It’s not for nothing they whistle. The fact that girls strangle their illegitimate children and go to prison for it, and that Anna Karenin flung herself under the train, and that in the villages they smear the gates with tar, and that you and I, without knowing why, are pleased by Katya’s purity, and that every one of us feels a vague craving for pure love, though he knows there is no such love—is all that prejudice? That is the one thing, brother, which has survived intact from natural selection, and, if it were not for that obscure force regulating the relations of the sexes, the Laevskys would have it all their own way, and mankind would degenerate in two years.”

Laevsky came into the drawing-room, greeted every one, and shaking hands with Von Koren, smiled ingratiatingly. He waited for a favourable moment and said to Samoylenko:

“Excuse me, Alexandr Daviditch, I must say two words to you.”