gan to get ready to go. Anna Akimovna was a little
embarrassed. . . . She had utterly forgotten in what department
Krylin served, and whether she had to give him money or not; and
if she had to, whether to give it now or send it afterwards in an
envelope.

"Where does he serve?" she whispered to Lysevitch.

"Goodness knows," muttered Lysevitch, yawning.

She reflected that if Krylin used to visit her father and her uncle
and respected them, it was probably not for nothing: apparently he
had been charitable at their expense, serving in some charitable
institution. As she said good-bye she slipped three hundred roubles
into his hand; he seemed taken aback, and looked at her for a minute
in silence with his pewtery eyes, but then seemed to understand and
said:

"The receipt, honoured Anna Akimovna, you can only receive on the
New Year."

Lysevitch had become utterly limp and heavy, and he staggered when
Mishenka put on his overcoat.

As he went downstairs he looked like a man in the last stage of
exhaustion, and it was evident that he would drop asleep as soon
as he got into his sledge.

"Your Excellency," he said languidly to Krylin, stopping in the
middle of the staircase, "has it ever happened to you to experience
a feeling as though some unseen force were drawing you out longer
and longer? You are drawn out and turn into the finest wire.
Subjectively this finds expression in a curious voluptuous feeling
which is impossible to compare with anything."

Anna Akimovna, standing at the top of the stairs, saw each of them
give Mishenka a note.

"Good-bye! Come again!" she called to them, and ran into her bedroom.

She quickly threw off her dress, that she was weary of already, put
on a dressing-gown, and ran downstairs; and as she ran downstairs
she laughed and thumped with her feet like a school-boy; she had a
great desire for mischief.

IV

Evening

Auntie, in a loose print blouse, Varvarushka and two old women,
were sitting in the dining-room having supper. A big piece of salt
meat, a ham, and various savouries, were lying on the table before
them, and clouds of steam were rising from the meat, which looked
particularly fat and appetizing. Wine was not served on the lower
story, but they made up for it with a great number of spirits and
home-made liqueurs. Agafyushka, the fat, white-skinned, well-fed
cook, was standing with her arms crossed in the doorway and talking
to the old women, and the dishes we