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“Forgive me, old fellow! I am a scoundrel, he muttered. “Don’t remember evil against me.”

He stepped back, but immediately cleared his throat resolutely and said:

“Oh, come what will! Damn it all! I’ll take him, and let people say what they like!”

Miguev took the baby and strode rapidly back.

“Let them say what they like,” he thought. “I’ll go at once, fall on my knees, and say: ‘Anna Filippovna!’ Anna is a good sort, she’ll understand. . . . And we’ll bring him up. . . . If it’s a boy we’ll call him Vladimir, and if it’s a girl we’ll call her Anna! Anyway, it will be a comfort in our old age.”

And he did as he determined. Weeping and almost faint with shame and terror, full of hope and vague rapture, he went into his bungalow, went up to his wife, and fell on his knees before her.

“Anna Filippovna!” he said with a sob, and he laid the baby on the floor. “Hear me before you punish. . . . I have sinned! This is my child. . . . You remember Agnia? Well, it was the devil drove me to it. . . .”

And, almost unconscious with shame and terror, he jumped up without waiting for an answer, and ran out into the open air as though he had received a thrashing. . . .

“I’ll stay here outside till she calls me,” he thought. “I’ll give her time to recover, and to think it over. . . .”

The porter Yermolay passed him with his balalaika, glanced at him and shrugged his shoulders. A minute later he passed him again, and again he shrugged his shoulders.

“Here’s a go! Did you ever!” he muttered grinning. “Aksinya, the washer-woman, was here just now, Semyon Erastovitch. The silly woman put her baby down on the steps here, and while she was indoors with me, someone took and carried off the baby. . . Who’d have thought it!”

“What? What are you saying?” shouted Miguev at the top of his voice.

Yermolay, interpreting his master’s wrath in his own fashion, scratched his head and heaved a sigh.

“I am sorry, Semyon Erastovitch,” he said, “but it’s the summer holidays, . . . one can’t get on without . . . without a woman, I mean. . . .”

And glancing at his master’s eyes glaring at him with anger and astonishment, he cleared his throat guiltily and went on:

“It’s a sin, of course, but there — what is one to do?. . . You’ve forbidden us to have strangers in the house, I know, but we’ve none of our own now. When Agnia was here I had no women to see me, for I had one at home; but now, you can see for yourself, sir, . . . one can’t help having strangers. In Agnia’s time, of course, there was nothing irregular, because. . .”

“Be off, you scoundrel!” Miguev shouted at him, stamping, and he went back into the room.

Anna Filippovna, amazed and wrathful, was sitting as before, her tear-stained eyes fixed on the baby. . . .

“There! there!” Miguev muttered with a pale face, twisting his lips into a smile. “It was a joke. . . . It’s not my baby, . . . it’s the washer-woman’s! . . . I . . . I was joking. . . . Take it to the porter.”