And it would be a long time before lessons were over at three o’clock!  And after school he could not go home nor to the Shelestovs’, but must go to give a lesson at Wolf’s.  This Wolf, a wealthy Jew who had turned Lutheran, did not send his children to the high school, but had them taught at home by the high-school masters, and paid five roubles a lesson.

He was bored, bored, bored.

At three o’clock he went to Wolf’s and spent there, as it seemed to him, an eternity.  He left there at five o’clock, and before seven he had to be at the high school again to a meeting of the masters —­to draw up the plan for the viva voce examination of the fourth and sixth classes.

When late in the evening he left the high school and went to the Shelestovs’, his heart was beating and his face was flushed.  A month before, even a week before, he had, every time that he made up his mind to speak to her, prepared a whole speech, with an introduction and a conclusion.  Now he had not one word ready; everything was in a muddle in his head, and all he knew was that today he would certainly declare himself, and that it was utterly impossible to wait any longer.

“I will ask her to come to the garden,” he thought; “we’ll walk about a little and I’ll speak.”

There was not a soul in the hall; he went into the dining-room and then into the drawing-room. . . .  There was no one there either.  He could hear Varya arguing with some one upstairs and the clink of the dressmaker’s scissors in the nursery.

There was a little room in the house which had three names:  the little room, the passage room, and the dark room.  There was a big cupboard in it where they kept medicines, gunpowder, and their hunting gear.  Leading from this room to the first floor was a narrow wooden staircase where cats were always asleep.  There were two doors in it—­one leading to the nursery, one to the drawing-room.  When Nikitin went into this room to go upstairs, the door from the nursery opened and shut with such a bang that it made the stairs and the cupboard tremble; Masha, in a dark dress, ran in with a piece of blue material in her hand, and, not noticing Nikitin, darted towards the stairs.

“Stay . . .” said Nikitin, stopping her.  “Good-evening, Godefroi . . . .  Allow me. . . .”

He gasped, he did not know what to say; with one hand he held her hand and with the other the blue material.  And she was half frightened, half surprised, and looked at him with big eyes.

“Allow me . . .”  Nikitin went on, afraid she would go away.  “There’s something I must say to you. . . .  Only . . . it’s inconvenient here.  I cannot, I am incapable. . . .  Understand, Godefroi, I can’t —­that’s all . . . .”

The blue material slipped on to the floor, and Nikitin took Masha by the other hand.  She turned pale, moved her lips, then stepped back from Nikitin and found herself in the corner between the wall and the cupboard.