"Rent it to me," the prince suddenly suggested.

It seems that this was just what Lebedev had been driving at. The idea had flashed through his mind three minutes earlier. And yet he no longer needed a tenant; he already had a candidate who had informed him that he might take the dacha. Lebedev knew positively, however, that there was no "might" and that he would certainly take it. Yet the thought had suddenly flashed through his

mind, a very fruitful one by his reckoning, of renting the dacha to the prince, under the pretext that the other tenant had not expressed himself definitively. "A whole collision and a whole new turn of affairs" suddenly presented itself to his imagination. He received the prince's suggestion almost with rapture, so that he even waved his hands at the direct question of the price.

"Well, as you wish. I'll ask. You won't come out the loser."

They were both leaving the garden.

"I could ... I could ... if you like, I could tell you something quite interesting, most esteemed Prince, concerning the same matter," Lebedev muttered, joyfully twining himself about at the prince's side.

The prince stopped.

"Darya Alexeevna also has a little dacha in Pavlovsk, sir."

"Well?"

"And a certain person is friends with her and apparently intends to visit her often in Pavlovsk. With a purpose."

"Well?"

"Aglaya Ivanovna ..."

"Ah, enough, Lebedev!" the prince interrupted with some unpleasant feeling, as if he had been touched on his sore spot. "It's all . . . not like that. Better tell me, when are you moving? The sooner the better for me, because I'm staying in a hotel . . ."

While talking, they left the garden and, without going inside, crossed the courtyard and reached the gate.

"It would be best," Lebedev finally decided, "if you moved here straight from the hotel today, and the day after tomorrow we can all go to Pavlovsk together."

"I'll have to see," the prince said pensively and went out of the gate.

Lebedev followed him with his eyes. He was struck by the prince's sudden absentmindedness. He had even forgotten to say "good-bye" as he left, had not even nodded his head, which was incompatible with what Lebedev knew of the prince's courtesy and attentiveness.

III

It was getting towards noon. The prince knew that of all the Epanchins the only one he might find in town now was the

general, because of his official duties, and that, too, was unlikely. It occurred to him that the general would perhaps just take him and drive straight to Pavlovsk, and he wanted very much to make one visit before that. At the risk of coming late to the Epanchins' and delaying his trip to Pavlovsk till tomorrow, the prince decided to go and look for the house he had wanted so much to call at.

This visit, however, was risky for him in a certain sense. He debated and hesitated. He knew that the house was on Gorokhovaya Street, near Sadovaya, and decided to go there, hoping that before he reached the place he would finally manage to make up his mind.

As he neared the intersection of Gorokhovaya and Sadovaya, he himself was surprised at his extraordinary agitation; he had never expected that his heart could pound so painfully. One house, probably because of its peculiar physiognomy, began to attract his attention from far away, and the prince later recalled saying to himself: "That's probably the very house." He approached with extraordinary curiosity to verify his guess; he felt that for some reason it would be particularly unpleasant if he had guessed right. The house was big, grim, three-storied, without any architecture, of a dirty green color. Some, though very few, houses of this sort, built at the end of the last century, have survived precisely on these Petersburg streets (where everything changes so quickly) almost without change. They are sturdily built, with thick walls and extremely few windows; the ground-floor windows sometimes have grilles. Most often there is a moneychanger's shop downstairs. The castrate¹⁴ who sits in the shop rents an apartment upstairs. Both outside and inside, everything is somehow inhospitable and dry, everything seems to hide and conceal itself, and why it should seem so simply from the physiognomy of the house—would be hard to explain. Architectural combinations of lines, of course, have their own secret. These houses are inhabited almost exclusively by commercial folk. Going up to the gates and looking at the inscription, the prince read: "House of the Hereditary Honorary Citizen Rogozhin."

No longer hesitant, he opened the glass door, which slammed noisily behind him, and started up the front stairway to the second floor. The stairway was dark, made of stone, crudely constructed, and its walls were painted red. He knew that Rogozhin with his mother and brother occupied the entire second floor of this dreary house. The servant who opened the door for the prince led him

without announcing him and led him a long way; they passed through one reception hall with faux-marbre walls, an oak parquet floor, and furniture from the twenties, crude and heavy, passed through some tiny rooms, turning and zigzagging, going up two or three steps and then down the same number, and finally knocked at some door. The door was opened by Parfyon Semyonych himself; seeing the prince, he went pale and froze on the spot, so that for some time he looked like a stone idol, staring with fixed and frightened eyes and twisting his mouth into a sort of smile perplexed in the highest degree—as if he found something impossible and almost miraculous in the prince's visit. The prince, though he had expected something of the sort, was even surprised.

"Parfyon, perhaps I've come at the wrong time. I'll go, then," he finally said in embarrassment.

"The right time! The right time!" Parfyon finally recollected himself. "Please come in."

They addressed each other as familiars. In Moscow they had often happened to spend long hours together, and there had even been several moments during their meetings that had left an all too memorable imprint on both their hearts. Now it was over three months since they had seen each other.

The paleness and, as it were, the quick, fleeting spasm still had not left Rogozhin's face. Though he had invited his guest in, his extraordinary embarrassment persisted. As he was showing the prince to a chair and seating him at the table, the prince chanced to turn to him and stopped under the impression of his extremely strange and heavy gaze. It was as if something pierced the prince and as if at the same time he remembered something—recent, heavy, gloomy. Not sitting down and standing motionless, he looked for some time straight into Rogozhin's eyes; they seemed to flash more intensely in the first moment. Finally Rogozhin smiled, but with some embarrassment and as if at a loss.

"Why are you staring like that?" he muttered. "Sit down!"

The prince sat down.

"Parfyon," he said, "tell me straight out, did you know I would come to Petersburg today, or not?"

"That you would come, I did think, and as you see I wasn't mistaken," the man said, smiling caustically, "but how should I know you'd come today?"

The harsh abruptness and strange irritation of the question contained in the answer struck the prince still more.

"But even if you had known I'd come today, why get so irritated?" the prince said softly in embarrassment.