ime, plays a nasty trick, and you go and kiss her!"

"But I can't understand myself how it happened!" whispered the
lieutenant, blinking guiltily. "Upon my honour, I don't understand
it! It's the first time in my life I've come across such a monster!
It's not her beauty that does for you, not her mind, but that . . .
you understand . . . insolence, cynicism. . . ."

"Insolence, cynicism . . . it's unclean! If you've such a longing
for insolence and cynicism, you might have picked a sow out of the
mire and have devoured her alive. It would have been cheaper, anyway!
Instead of two thousand three hundred!"

"You do express yourself elegantly!" said the lieutenant, frowning.
"I'll pay you back the two thousand three hundred!"

"I know you'll pay it back, but it's not a question of money! Damn
the money! What revolts me is your being such a limp rag . . . such
filthy feebleness! And engaged! With a fiancee!"

"Don't speak of it . . ." said the lieutenant, blushing. "I loathe
myself as it is. I should like to sink into the earth. It's sickening
and vexatious that I shall have to bother my aunt for that five
thousand. . . ."

Kryukov continued for some time longer expressing his indignation
and grumbling, then, as he grew calmer, he sat down on the sofa and
began to jeer at his cousin.

"You young officers!" he said with contemptuous irony. "Nice
bridegrooms."

Suddenly he leapt up as though he had been stung, stamped his foot,
and ran about the study.

"No, I'm not going to leave it like that!" he said, shaking his
fist. "I will have those IOUs, I will! I'll give it her! One doesn't
beat women, but I'll break every bone in her body. . . . I'll pound
her to a jelly! I'm not a lieutenant! You won't touch me with
insolence or cynicism! No-o-o, damn her! Mishka!" he shouted, "run
and tell them to get the racing droshky out for me!"

Kryukov dressed rapidly, and, without heeding the agitated lieutenant,
got into the droshky, and with a wave of his hand resolutely raced
off to Susanna Moiseyevna. For a long time the lieutenant gazed out
of window at the clouds of dust that rolled after his cousin's
droshky, stretched, yawned, and went to his own room. A quarter of
an hour later he was sound asleep.

At six o'clock he was waked up and summoned to dinner.

"How nice this is of Alexey!" his cousin's wife greeted him in the
dining-room. "He keeps us waiting for dinner."

"Do you mean to say he's not come back yet?" ya