“Poor Lili has got spasms again. Go to sleep, my child, your examination’s to-morrow.…”

She took a bottle of something out of the cupboard, went to the window, read the label, and went away.

“Marya Leontyevna, those are not the drops!” Volodya heard a woman’s voice, a minute later. “That’s convallaria, and Lili wants morphine. Is your son asleep? Ask him to look for it.…”

It was Nyuta’s voice. Volodya turned cold. He hurriedly put on his trousers, flung his coat over his shoulders, and went to the door.

“Do you understand? Morphine,” Nyuta explained in a whisper. “There must be a label in Latin. Wake Volodya; he will find it.”

Maman opened the door and Volodya caught sight of Nyuta. She was wearing the same loose wrapper in which she had gone to bathe. Her hair hung loose and disordered on her shoulders, her face looked sleepy and dark in the half-light.…

“Why, Volodya is not asleep,” she said. “Volodya, look in the cupboard for the morphine, there’s a dear! What a nuisance Lili is! She has always something the matter.”

Maman muttered something, yawned, and went away.

“Look for it,” said Nyuta. “Why are you standing still?”

Volodya went to the cupboard, knelt down, and began looking through the bottles and boxes of medicine. His hands were trembling, and he had a feeling in his chest and stomach as though cold waves were running all over his inside. He felt suffocated and giddy from the smell of ether, carbolic acid, and various drugs, which he quite unnecessarily snatched up with his trembling fingers and spilled in so doing.

“I believe maman has gone,” he thought. “That’s a good thing…a good thing.…”

“Will you be quick?” said Nyuta, drawling.

“In a minute.…Here, I believe this is morphine,” said Volodya, reading on one of the labels the word “morph…” “Here it is!”

Nyuta was standing in the doorway in such a way that one foot was in his room and one was in the passage. She was tidying her hair, which was difficult to put in order because it was so thick and long, and looked absent-mindedly at Volodya. In her loose wrap, with her sleepy face and her hair down, in the dim light that came into the white sky not yet lit by the sun, she seemed to Volodya captivating, magnificent.…Fascinated, trembling all over, and remembering with relish how he had held that exquisite body in his arms in the arbour, he handed her the bottle and said:

“How wonderful you are!”

“What?”

She came into the room.

“What?” she asked, smiling.

He was silent and looked at her, then, just as in the arbour, he took her hand, and she looked at him with a smile and waited for what would happen next.

“I love you,” he whispered.

She left off smiling, thought a minute, and said: