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And, as I have already told you, we used, Kolosov and I, to go pretty often to Ivan Semyonitch’s. Sometimes, when he was out of humour, the retired lieutenant did not make me sit down to cards; on such occasions, he would shrink into a corner in silence, scowling and looking crossly at every one. The first time I was delighted at his letting me off so easily; but afterwards I would sometimes begin myself begging him to sit down to whist, the part of third person was so insupportable! I was so unpleasantly in Kolosov’s and Varia’s way, though they did assure each other that there was no need to mind me!…

Meanwhile time went on…. They were happy…. I have no great fondness for describing other people’s happiness. But then I began to notice that Varia’s childish ecstasy had gradually given way to a more womanly, more restless feeling. I began to surmise that the new song was being sung to the old tune–that is, that Kolosov was…little by little…cooling. This discovery, I must own, delighted me; I did not feel, I must confess, the slightest indignation against Andrei.

The intervals between our visits became longer and longer…. Varia began to meet us with tear-stained eyes. Reproaches were heard … Sometimes I asked Kolosov with affected indifference, ‘Well, shall we go to Ivan Semyonitch’s to-day?’ … He looked coldly at me, and answered quietly, ‘No, we’re not going.’ I sometimes fancied that he smiled slily when he spoke to me of Varia…. I failed generally to fill Gavrilov’s place with him…. Gavrilov was a thousand times more good-natured and foolish than I.

Now allow me a slight digression…. When I spoke of my university comrades, I did not mention a certain Mr. Shtchitov. He was five-and-thirty; he had been a student for ten years already. I can see even now his rather long pale face, his little brown eyes, his long hawk nose crooked at the end, his thin sarcastic lips, his solemn upstanding shock of hair, and his chin that lost itself complacently in the wide striped cravat of the colour of a raven’s wing, the shirt front with bronze buttons, the open blue frock-coat and striped waistcoat…. I can hear his unpleasantly jarring laugh…. He went everywhere, was conspicuous at all possible kinds of ‘dancing classes.’ … I remember I could not listen to his cynical stories without a peculiar shudder…. Kolosov once compared him to an unswept Russian refreshment bar … a horrible comparison! And with all that, there was a lot of intelligence, common sense, observation, and wit in the man…. He sometimes impressed us by some saying so apt, so true and cutting, that we were all involuntarily reduced to silence and looked at him with amazement. But, to be sure, it is just the same to a Russian whether he has uttered an absurdity or a clever thing. Shtchitov was especially dreaded by those self-conscious, dreamy, and not particularly gifted youths who spend whole days in painfully hatching a dozen trashy lines of verse and reading them in sing-song to their ‘friends,’ and who despise every sort of positive science. One such he simply drove out of Moscow, by continually repeating to him two of his own lines. Yet all the while Shtchitov himself did nothing and learnt nothing…. But that’s all in the natural order of things. Well, Shtchitov, God only knows why, began jeering at my romantic attachment to Kolosov. The first time, with noble indignation, I told him to go to the devil; the second time, with chilly contempt, I informed him that he was not capable of judging of our friendship–but I did not send him away; and when, on taking leave of me, he observed that without Kolosov’s permission I didn’t even dare to praise him, I felt annoyed; Shtchitov’s last words sank into my heart.–For more than a fortnight I had not seen Varia…. Pride, love, a vague anticipation, a number of different feelings were astir within me … with a wave of the hand and a fearful sinking at my heart, I set off alone to Ivan Semyonitch’s.