committing adultery."

"How original!" muttered Sarudine, as he again shrugged his shoulders.

"Do you think so?" asked the other, with a slight shade of annoyance in
his tone. "Well, I don't! Yes, blackguards, as I said, are the most
sincere and interesting people imaginable, for they have no conception
of the bounds of human baseness. I always feel particularly pleased to
shake hands with a blackguard."

He immediately grasped Sarudine's hand and shook it vigorously as he
looked him full in the face. Then he frowned, and muttered curtly,
"Good-bye, good-night," and left him.

For a few moments Sarudine stood perfectly still and watched him
depart. He did not know how to take such speeches as these of Sanine;
he became at once bewildered and uneasy. Then he thought of Lida, and
smiled. Sanine was her brother, and what he had said was really right
after all. He began to feel a sort of brotherly attachment for him.

"An amusing fellow, by Gad!" he thought, complacently, as if Sanine in
a way belonged to him, also. Then he opened the gate, and went across
the moonlit courtyard to his quarters.

On reaching home, Sanine undressed and got into bed, where he tried to
read "Thus spake Zarathustra" which he had found among Lida's books.
But the first few pages were enough to irritate him. Such inflated
imagery left him unmoved. He spat, flung the volume aside, and soon
fell fast asleep.