t of?
. . . You were a wealthy man and had everything you wanted. . . .
Your marriage was an idle whim, and so was your divorce. You were
making a lot of money. . . . I remember you made a scoop of twenty
thousand over one contract. Whom should I have fleeced if not you?
And I must own I envied you. If you grabbed anything they took off
their caps to you, while they would thrash me for a rouble and slap
me in the face at the club. . . . But there, why recall it? It is
high time to forget it."

"Tell me, please, how did Sofya Mihailovna get on afterwards?"

"With her ten thousand? Very badly. God knows what it was--she
lost her head, perhaps, or maybe her pride and her conscience
tormented her at having sold her honour, or perhaps she loved you;
but, do you know, she took to drink. . . . As soon as she got her
money she was off driving about with officers. It was drunkenness,
dissipation, debauchery. . . . When she went to a restaurant with
officers she was not content with port or anything light, she must
have strong brandy, fiery stuff to stupefy her."

"Yes, she was eccentric. . . . I had a lot to put up with from her
. . . sometimes she would take offence at something and begin being
hysterical. . . . And what happened afterwards?"

"One week passed and then another. . . . I was sitting at home,
writing something. All at once the door opened and she walked in
. . . drunk. 'Take back your cursed money,' she said, and flung a
roll of notes in my face. . . . So she could not keep it up. I
picked up the notes and counted them. It was five hundred short of
the ten thousand, so she had only managed to get through five
hundred."

"Where did you put the money?"

"It's all ancient history . . . there's no reason to conceal it
now. . . . In my pocket, of course. Why do you look at me like that?
Wait a bit for what will come later. . . . It's a regular novel, a
pathological study. A couple of months later I was going home one
night in a nasty drunken condition. . . . I lighted a candle, and
lo and behold! Sofya Mihailovna was sitting on my sofa, and she was
drunk, too, and in a frantic state--as wild as though she had run
out of Bedlam. 'Give me back my money,' she said, 'I have changed
my mind; if I must go to ruin I won't do it by halves, I'll have
my fling! Be quick, you scoundrel, give me my money!' A disgraceful
scene!"

"And you . . . gave it her?"

"I gave her, I remember, ten roubles."

"Oh! How could you?