Nadyezhda Fyodorovna went up to her gate and stopped.

“Let me go,” she murmured, trembling all over and seeing nothing before her in the darkness but his white tunic. “You’re right: I’m a horrible woman.… I’m to blame, but let me go … I beg you.” She touched his cold hand and shuddered. “I beseech you.…”

“Alas!” sighed Kirilin, “alas! it’s not part of my plan to let you go; I only mean to give you a lesson and make you realise. And what’s more, madam, I’ve too little faith in women.”

“I’m miserable.…”

Nadyezhda Fyodorovna listened to the even splash of the sea, looked at the sky studded with stars, and longed to make haste and end it all, and get away from the cursed sensation of life, with its sea, stars, men, fever.

“Only not in my home,” she said coldly. “Take me somewhere else.”

“Come to Muridov’s. That’s better.”

“Where’s that?”

“Near the old wall.”

She walked quickly along the street and then turned into the side-street that led towards the mountains. It was dark. There were pale streaks of light here and there on the pavement, from the lighted windows, and it seemed to her that, like a fly, she kept falling into the ink and crawling out into the light again. At one point he stumbled, almost fell down and burst out laughing.

“He’s drunk,” thought Nadyezhda Fyodorovna. “Never mind.… Never mind.… So be it.”

Atchmianov, too, soon took leave of the party and followed Nadyezhda Fyodorovna to ask her to go for a row. He went to her house and looked over the fence: the windows were wide open, there were no lights.

“Nadyezhda Fyodorovna!” he called.

A moment passed, he called again.

“Who’s there?” he heard Olga’s voice.

“Is Nadyezhda Fyodorovna at home?”

“No, she has not come in yet.”

“Strange … very strange,” thought Atchmianov, feeling very uneasy. “She went home.…”

He walked along the boulevard, then along the street, and glanced in at the windows of Sheshkovsky’s. Laevsky was sitting at the table without his coat on, looking attentively at his cards.

“Strange, strange,” muttered Atchmianov, and remembering Laevsky’s hysterics, he felt ashamed. “If she is not at home, where is she?”

He went to Nadyezhda Fyodorovna’s lodgings again, and looked at the dark windows.

“It’s a cheat, a cheat …” he thought, remembering that, meeting him at midday at Marya Konstantinovna’s, she had promised to go in a boat with him that evening.