She was trembling all over. 'Take me, then,' she whispered scarcely
above her breath.





XXIX


Nikolai Artemyevitch was walking up and down in his study with a scowl
on his face. Shubin was sitting at the window with his legs crossed,
tranquilly smoking a cigar.

'Leave off tramping from corner to corner, please,' he observed,
knocking the ash off his cigar. 'I keep expecting you to speak;
there's a rick in my neck from watching you. Besides, there's
something artificial, melodramatic in your striding.'

'You can never do anything but joke,' responded Nikolai Artemyevitch.
'You won't enter into my position, you refuse to realise that I am
used to that woman, that I am attached to her in fact, that her
absence is bound to distress me. Here it's October, winter is upon us.
. . . What can she be doing in Revel?'

'She must be knitting stockings--for herself; for herself--not for
you.'

'You may laugh, you may laugh; but I tell you I know no woman like