When Liza returned home from her husband’s villa and went into the bedroom on tip-toe, as though nothing had happened, Groholsky, pale, with hectic flushes on his cheeks, was lying in the attitude of a man at his last gasp and moaning.

On seeing Liza, he sprang out of bed, and began pacing about the bedroom.

“So that’s what you are like, is it?” he shrieked in a high tenor.  “So that’s it!  Very much obliged to you!  It’s revolting, madam!  Immoral, in fact!  Let me tell you that!”

Liza turned pale, and of course burst into tears.  When women feel that they are in the right, they scold and shed tears; when they are conscious of being in fault, they shed tears only.

“On a level with those depraved creatures!  It’s . . . it’s . . . it’s . . . lower than any impropriety!  Why, do you know what they are?  They are kept women!  Cocottes!  And you a respectable woman go rushing off where they are. . .  And he . . .  He!  What does he want?  What more does he want of me?  I don’t understand it!  I have given him half of my property—­I have given him more!  You know it yourself!  I have given him what I have not myself. . . .  I have given him almost all. . . .  And he!  I’ve put up with your calling him Vanya, though he has no right whatever to such intimacy.  I have put up with your walks, kisses after dinner. . . .  I have put up with everything, but this I will not put up with. . . .  Either he or I!  Let him go away, or I go away!  I’m not equal to living like this any longer, no!  You can see that for yourself! . . .  Either he or I. . . .  Enough!  The cup is brimming over. . . .  I have suffered a great deal as it is. . . .  I am going to talk to him at once—­this minute!  What is he, after all?  What has he to be proud of?  No, indeed. . . .  He has no reason to think so much of himself . . . .”

Groholsky said a great many more valiant and stinging things, but did not “go at once”; he felt timid and abashed. . . .  He went to Ivan Petrovitch three days later.

When he went into his apartment, he gaped with astonishment.  He was amazed at the wealth and luxury with which Bugrov had surrounded himself.  Velvet hangings, fearfully expensive chairs. . . .  One was positively ashamed to step on the carpet.  Groholsky had seen many rich men in his day, but he had never seen such frenzied luxury. . . .  And the higgledy-piggledy muddle he saw when, with an inexplicable tremor, he walked into the drawing-room—­plates with bits of bread on them were lying about on the grand piano, a glass was standing on a chair, under the table there was a basket with a filthy rag in it. . . .  Nut shells were strewn about in the windows.  Bugrov himself was not quite in his usual trim when Groholsky walked in . . . .  With a red face and uncombed locks he was pacing about the room in deshabille, talking to himself, apparently much agitated.  Mishutka was sitting on the sofa there in the drawing-room, and was making the air vibrate with a piercing scream.