t as little attention as possible--probably
his professional affairs were at this time in a bad way. With a single
motion of his head, while walking, he called Tamara out of the drawing
room and vanished with her into her room. And there also arrived
Egmont-Lavretzki the actor, clean-shaven, tall, resembling a court
flunky with his vulgar and insolently contemptuous face.

The clerks from the gastronomical store danced with all the ardour of
youth and with all the decorum recommended by Herman Hoppe, the
self-instructor of good manners. In this regard the girls also
responded to their intentions. Both with these and with the others it
was accounted especially decorous and well-bred to dance as rigidly as
possible, keeping the arms hanging down, while the heads were raised
high and inclined to one side with a certain proud, and, at the same
time, tired and enervated air. In the intermissions, between the
figures of the dance, it was necessary to fan one's self with a
handkerchief, with a bored and negligent air ... In a word, they all
made believe that they belonged to the choicest society, and that if
they do dance, they only do it out of condescension, as a little
comradely turn. But still they danced so ardently that the perspiration
rolled down in streams from the clerks of Kereshkovsky.

Two or three rows had already happened in different houses. Some man,
all in blood, whose face in the pale light of the moon's crescent
seemed black from the blood, was running around in the street, cursing,
and, without paying the least attention to his wounds, was searching
for his cap which had been lost in the brawl. On Little Yamskaya some
government scribes had had a fight with a ship's company. The tired
pianists and musicians played as in a delirium, in a doze, through
mechanical habit. This was towards the waning of the night.

Altogether unexpectedly, seven students, a sub-professor, and a local
reporter walked into the establishment of Anna Markovna.

CHAPTER VIII.

They had all, except the reporter, passed the whole day together, from
the very morning, celebrating May Day with some young women of their
acquaintance. They had rowed in boats on the Dnieper, had cooked field
porridge on the other side of the river, in the thick, bitter-smelling
underbrush; had bathed--men and women by turns--in the rapid, warm
water; had drunk home-made spiced brandy, sung sonorous songs of Little
Russia, and had returned to to