time materials, at another time silk or a parasol, and the debt had
grown imperceptibly.

"I will tell him about it to-day . . .", she used to decide, but
at once reflected that in Laevsky's present mood it would hardly
be convenient to talk to him of debts.

Thirdly, she had on two occasions in Laevsky's absence received a
visit from Kirilin, the police captain: once in the morning when
Laevsky had gone to bathe, and another time at midnight when he was
playing cards. Remembering this, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna flushed
crimson, and looked round at the cook as though she might overhear
her thoughts. The long, insufferably hot, wearisome days, beautiful
languorous evenings and stifling nights, and the whole manner of
living, when from morning to night one is at a loss to fill up the
useless hours, and the persistent thought that she was the prettiest
young woman in the town, and that her youth was passing and being
wasted, and Laevsky himself, though honest and idealistic, always
the same, always lounging about in his slippers, biting his nails,
and wearying her with his caprices, led by degrees to her becoming
possessed by desire, and as though she were mad, she thought of
nothing else day and night. Breathing, looking, walking, she felt
nothing but desire. The sound of the sea told her she must love;
the darkness of evening--the same; the mountains--the same. . . .
And when Kirilin began paying her attentions, she had neither
the power nor the wish to resist, and surrendered to him. . . .

Now the foreign steamers and the men in white reminded her for some
reason of a huge hall; together with the shouts of French she heard
the strains of a waltz, and her bosom heaved with unaccountable