re in no way inferior to himself,
Vassilyev, who watched over every step he took and every word he
uttered, who was fastidious and cautious, and ready to raise every
trifle to the level of a problem. And he longed for one evening to
live as his friends did, to open out, to let himself loose from his own
control. If vodka had to be drunk, he would drink it, though his head
would be splitting next morning. If he were taken to the women he would
go. He would laugh, play the fool, gaily respond to the passing advances
of strangers in the street....

He went out of the restaurant laughing. He liked his friends--one in a
crushed broad-brimmed hat, with an affectation of artistic untidiness;
the other in a sealskin cap, a man not poor, though he affected to
belong to the Bohemia of learning. He liked the snow, the pale street
lamps, the sharp black tracks left in the first snow by the feet of the
passers-by. He liked the air, and especially that limpid, tender, naive,
as it were virginal tone, which can be seen in nature only twice in the
year--when everything is covered with snow, and in spring on bright days
and moonlight evenings when the ice breaks on the river.

"Against my will an unknown force,
Has led me to these mournful shores,"

he hummed in an undertone.

And the tune for some reason haunted him and his friends all the way,
and all three of them hummed it mechanically, not in time with one
another.

Vassilyev's imagination was picturing how, in another ten minutes, he
and his friends would knock at a door; how by little dark passages and
dark rooms they would steal in to the women; how, taking advantage of
the darkness, he would strike a match, would light up and see the
face of a martyr and a guilty smile. The unknown, fair or dark, would
certainly have her hair down and be wearing a white dressing-jacket; she
would be panic-stricken by the light, would be fearfully confused, and
would say: "For God's sake, what are you doing! Put it out!" It would
all be dreadful, but interesting and new.

II

The friends turned out of Trubnoy Square into Gratchevka, and soon
reached the side street which Vassilyev only knew by reputation. Seeing
two rows of houses with brightly lighted windows and wide-open doors,
and hearing gay strains of pianos and violins, sounds which floated
out from every door and mingled in a strange chaos, as though an unseen
orchestra were tuning up in the darkness above the roofs, V