"No," she was beginning.

"Wait a minute."

I leapt up and ran to Apollon. I had to get out of the room somehow.

"Apollon," I whispered in feverish haste, flinging down before him the
seven roubles which had remained all the time in my clenched fist,
"here are your wages, you see I give them to you; but for that you must
come to my rescue: bring me tea and a dozen rusks from the restaurant.
If you won't go, you'll make me a miserable man! You don't know what
this woman is.... This is--everything! You may be imagining
something.... But you don't know what that woman is! ..."

Apollon, who had already sat down to his work and put on his spectacles
again, at first glanced askance at the money without speaking or
putting down his needle; then, without paying the slightest attention
to me or making any answer, he went on busying himself with his needle,
which he had not yet threaded. I waited before him for three minutes
with my arms crossed A LA NAPOLEON. My temples were moist with sweat.
I was pale, I felt it. But, thank God, he must have been moved to
pity, looking at me. Having threaded his needle he deliberately got up
from his seat, deliberately moved back his chair, deliberately took off
his spectacles, deliberately counted the money, and finally asking me
over his shoulder: "Shall I get a whole portion?" deliberately walked
out of the room. As I was going back to Liza, the thought occurred to
me on the way: shouldn't I run away just as I was in my dressing-gown,
no matter where, and then let happen what would?

I sat down again. She looked at me uneasily. For some minutes we were
silent.

"I will kill him," I shouted suddenly, striking the table with my fist
so that the ink spurted out of the inkstand.

"What are you saying!" she cried, starting.

"I will kill him! kill him!" I shrieked, suddenly striking the table
in absolute frenzy, and at the same time fully understanding how stupid
it was to be in such a frenzy. "You don't know, Liza, what that
torturer is to me. He is my torturer.... He has gone now to fetch
some rusks; he ..."

And suddenly I burst into tears. It was an hysterical attack. How
ashamed I felt in the midst of my sobs; but still I could not restrain
them.

She was frightened.

"What is the matter? What is wrong?" she cried, fussing about me.

"Water, give me water, over there!" I muttered in a faint voice, though
I was inwardly conscious that I could have got on ve