“Ah, yes! Who was that pretty thing I just met on your stairs, sharp-eyed and fair-haired?” he suddenly asked the prince.

“I really don’t know,” the latter answered quickly, blushing.

“Then who would know?” Darzan laughed.

“Though it . . . it might have been . . .” the prince somehow faltered.

“It . . . but it was precisely his sister, Lizaveta Makarovna!” Stebelkov suddenly pointed at me. “Because I also met her earlier . . .”

“Ah, indeed!” the prince picked up, but this time with an extremely solid and serious expression on his face. “It must have been Lizaveta Makarovna, a close friend of Anna Fyodorovna Stolbeev, whose apartment I’m now living in. She must have come calling today on Darya Onisimovna, who is also a good friend of Anna Fyodorovna’s and in charge of the house in her absence . . .”

That was all exactly how it was. This Darya Onisimovna was the mother of poor Olya, whose story I have already told and whom Tatyana Pavlovna finally sheltered with Mrs. Stolbeev. I knew perfectly well that Liza used to visit Mrs. Stolbeev and later occasionally visited poor Darya Onisimovna, whom they all came to love very much; but suddenly, after this, incidentally, extremely sensible statement from the prince, and especially after Stebelkov’s stupid outburst, or maybe because I had just been called “prince,” suddenly, owing to all that, I blushed all over. Fortunately, just then Nashchokin got up to leave; he offered his hand to Darzan as well. The moment Stebelkov and I were left alone, he suddenly started nodding to me towards Darzan, who was standing in the doorway with his back to us. I shook my fist at Stebelkov.

A minute later Darzan also left, having arranged with the prince to meet the next day without fail at some place they had already settled on—a gambling house, naturally. On his way out he shouted something to Stebelkov and bowed slightly to me. As soon as he went out, Stebelkov jumped up from his place and stood in the middle of the room with a raised finger:

“Last week that little squire pulled off the following stunt: he gave a promissory note and falsified Averyanov’s name on it. And the nice little note still exists in that guise, only one doesn’t do such things! It’s criminal. Eight thousand.”

“And surely it’s you who have this note?” I glanced at him ferociously.

“I have a bank, sir, I have a mont-de-piété,³⁶ not promissory notes. Have you heard of such a mont-de-piété in Paris? Bread and charity for the poor. I have a mont-de-piété . . .”

The prince stopped him rudely and spitefully:

“What are you doing here? Why did you stay?”

“Ah!” Stebelkov quickly began nodding with his eyes. “And that? What about that?”

“No, no, no, not that,” the prince shouted and stamped his foot, “I told you!”

“Ah, well, if so . . . then so . . . Only it’s not so . . .”

He turned sharply and, inclining his head and rounding his back, suddenly left. The prince called after him when he was already in the doorway:

“Be it known to you, sir, that I am not afraid of you in the least!”

He was highly vexed, made as if to sit down, but, having glanced at me, did not. It was as if his glance was also saying to me, “Why are you also sticking around?”

“Prince,” I tried to begin . . .

“I really have no time, Arkady Makarovich, I’m about to leave.”

“One moment, Prince, it’s very important to me; and, first of all, take back your three hundred.”

“What’s this now?”

He was pacing, but he paused.

“It’s this, that after all that’s happened . . . and what you said about Versilov, that he’s dishonorable, and, finally, your tone all the rest of the time . . . In short, I simply can’t accept.”

“You’ve been accepting for a whole month, though.”

He suddenly sat down on a chair. I stood by the table, flipping through Belinsky’s book with one hand and holding my hat with the other.

“The feelings were different, Prince . . . And, finally, I’d never have brought it as far as a certain figure . . . This gambling . . . In short, I can’t!”

“You simply haven’t distinguished yourself in anything, and so you’re frantic. I beg you to leave that book alone.”

“What does ‘haven’t distinguished yourself ’ mean? And, finally, you almost put me on a par with Stebelkov in front of your guests.”

“Ah, there’s the answer!” he grinned caustically. “Besides, you were embarrassed that Darzan called you ‘prince.’”

He laughed maliciously. I flared up:

“I don’t even understand . . . I wouldn’t take your princehood gratis . . .”

“I know your character. It was ridiculous the way you cried out in defense of Mme. Akhmakov . . . Leave the book alone!”

“What does that mean?” I also shouted.

“Le-e-eave the book alo-o-one!” he suddenly yelled, sitting up fiercely in his armchair, as if ready to charge.

“This goes beyond all limits,” I said and quickly left the room. But before I reached the end of the hall, he called out to me from the door of the study:

“Come back, Arkady Makarovich! Come ba-a-ack! Come ba-a-ack right now!”

I paid no attention and walked on. He quickly overtook me, seized my arm, and dragged me back to the study. I didn’t resist!

“Take it!” he said, pale with agitation, handing me the three hundred roubles I had left there. “You absolutely must take it . . . otherwise we . . . you absolutely must!”

“How can I take it, Prince?”

“Well, I’ll ask your forgiveness, shall I? Well, forgive me! . . .”

“Prince, I always loved you, and if you also . . .”

“I also; take it . . .”

I took it. His lips were trembling.

“I understand, Prince, that you were infuriated by this scoundrel . . . but I won’t take it, Prince, unless we kiss each other, as with previous quarrels . . .”

I was also trembling as I said it.

“Well, what softheartedness,” the prince murmured with an embarrassed smile, but he leaned over and kissed me. I shuddered: in his face, at the moment of the kiss, I could decidedly read disgust.

“Did he at least bring you the money? . . .”

“Eh, it makes no difference.”

“It’s for you that I . . .”

“He did, he did.”

“Prince, we used to be friends . . . and, finally, Versilov . . .”

“Well, yes, yes, all right!”

“And, finally, I really don’t know ultimately, this three hundred . . .”

I was holding it in my hands.

“Take it, ta-a-ake it!” he smiled again, but there was something very unkind in his smile.

I took it.

Chapter Three

I

I TOOK IT because I loved him. To whoever doesn’t believe it, I’ll reply that at least at the moment when I took this money from him, I was firmly convinced that, if I had wanted to, I could very well have gotten it from another source. And therefore it means that I took it not out of extremity, but out of delicacy, only so as not to offend him. Alas, that was how I reasoned then! But even so I felt very oppressed on leaving him: I had seen an extraordinary change towards me that morning; there had never yet been such a tone; and against Versilov there was positive rebellion. Stebelkov, of course, had vexed him greatly with something earlier, but he had started even before Stebelkov. I’ll repeat once more: it had been possible to notice a change compared with the beginning in all those recent days, but not like that, not to such a degree—that’s the main thing.

The stupid news about this imperial aide-de-camp Baron Bjoring might have had an influence as well . . . I also left in agitation, but . . . That’s just it, that something quite different was shining then, and I let so much pass before my eyes light-mindedly: I hastened to let it pass, I drove away all that was gloomy and turned to what was shining . . .