ters--_M. S._ That, no
doubt, meant Masha Shelestov.

"They've scented it out already, the rascals . . ." thought Nikitin.
"How is it they know everything?"

The second lesson was in the fifth class. And there two letters,
_M. S._, were written on the blackboard; and when he went out of
the classroom at the end of the lesson, he heard the shout behind
him as though from a theatre gallery:

"Hurrah for Masha Shelestov!"

His head was heavy from sleeping in his clothes, his limbs were
weighted down with inertia. The boys, who were expecting every day
to break up before the examinations, did nothing, were restless,
and so bored that they got into mischief. Nikitin, too, was restless,
did not notice their pranks, and was continually going to the window.
He could see the street brilliantly lighted up with the sun; above
the houses the blue limpid sky, the birds, and far, far away, beyond
the gardens and the houses, vast indefinite distance, the forests
in the blue haze, the smoke from a passing train. . . .

Here two officers in white tunics, playing with their whips, passed
in the street in the shade of the acacias. Here a lot of Jews, with
grey beards, and caps on, drove past in a waggonette. . . . The
governess walked by with the director's granddaughter. Som ran by
in the company of two other dogs. . . . And then Varya, wearing a
simple grey dress and red stockings, carrying the "Vyestnik Evropi"
in her hand, passed by. She must have been to the town library. . . .

And it would be a long time before lessons were over at three
o'clock! And after school he could not go home nor to the Shelestovs',
but must go to give a lesson at Wolf's. This Wolf, a wealthy Jew
who had turned Lutheran, did not send his children to the high
school, but had them taught at home by the high-school masters, and
paid five roubles a lesson.

He was bored, bored, bored.

At three o'clock he went to Wolf's and spent there, as it seemed
to him, an eternity. He left there at five o'clock, and before seven
he had to be at the high school again to a meeting of the masters
--to draw up the plan for the _viva voce_ examination of the fourth
and sixth classes.

When late in the evening he left the high school and went to the
Shelestovs', his heart was beating and his face was flushed. A month
before, even a week before, he had, every time that he made up his
mind to speak to her, prepared a whole speech, with an introduction
and a conclusion