From the boulevard they went back to the pavilion and walked along
the beach, and looked for a long time at the phosphorescence on the
water. Von Koren began telling them why it looked phosphorescent.

XIV

"It's time I went to my _vint_. . . . They will be waiting for me,"
said Laevsky. "Good-bye, my friends."

"I'll come with you; wait a minute," said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and
she took his arm.

They said good-bye to the company and went away. Kirilin took leave
too, and saying that he was going the same way, went along beside
them.

"What will be, will be," thought Nadyezhda Fyodorovna. "So be
it. . . ."

And it seemed to her that all the evil memories in her head had
taken shape and were walking beside her in the darkness, breathing
heavily, while she, like a fly that had fallen into the inkpot, was
crawling painfully along the pavement and smirching Laevsky's side
and arm with blackness.

If Kirilin should do anything horrid, she thought, not he but she
would be to blame for it. There was a time when no man would have
talked to her as Kirilin had done, and she had torn up her security
like a thread and destroyed it irrevocably--who was to blame for
it? Intoxicated by her passions she had smiled at a complete stranger,