traversed the drawing room and let himself down on a chair
alongside of Liuba, who, in accordance with etiquette, only gathered up
her skirt a little, preserving the abstracted and independent air of a
girl from a respectable house.

"How do you do, miss?" he said.

"How do you do?" answered Liuba abruptly.

"How are you getting along?"

"Thanks--thank you. Treat me to a smoke."

"Pardon me--I don't smoke."

"So that's how. A man--and he doesn't smoke, just like that. Well,
then, treat me to some Lafitte with lemonade. I am terribly fond of
Lafitte with lemonade."

He let that pass in silence.

"Ooh, what a stingy daddy! Where do you work, now? Are you one of the
government clerks?"

"No, I'm a teacher. I teach the German language."

"But I have seen you somewhere, daddy. Your physiognomy is familiar to
me. Where have I met you before?"

"Well, now, I don't know, really. Unless it was on the street."

"It might have been on the street, likely as not... You ought to treat
me to an orange, at least. May I ask for an orange?"

He again grew quiet, looking about him. His face began to glisten and
the pimples on his forehead became red. He was mentally appraising all
the women, choosing a likely one for himself, and was at the same time
embarrassed by his silence. There was nothing at all to talk about;
besides that the indifferent importunity of Liuba irritated him. Fat
Katie pleased him with her large, bovine body, but she must be--he
decided in his mind--very frigid in love, like all stout women, and in
addition to that not handsome of face. Vera also excited him, with her
appearance of a little boy, and her firm thighs, closely enveloped by
the white tights; and Little White Manya, looking so like an innocent
school-girl; and Jennie with her energetic, swarthy, handsome face. For
one minute he was all ready to stop at Jennie, but only started in his
chair and did not venture--by her easy, inaccessible and negligent air,
and because she in all sincerity did not pay him the least attention,
he surmised that she was the most spoilt of all the girls in the
establishment, accustomed to having the visitors spend more money on
her than on the others. But the pedagogue was a calculating man,
burthened with a large family and an exhausted wife, destroyed by his
masculine demands and suffering from a multiplicity of female ills.
Teaching in a female high school and in an institute, he lived
constantly in a sort o