Everything had long been asleep.  The only person not asleep was the young wife of Tchernomordik, a qualified dispenser who kept a chemist’s shop at B——.  She had gone to bed and got up again three times, but could not sleep, she did not know why.  She sat at the open window in her nightdress and looked into the street.  She felt bored, depressed, vexed . . . so vexed that she felt quite inclined to cry—­again she did not know why.  There seemed to be a lump in her chest that kept rising into her throat. . . .  A few paces behind her Tchernomordik lay curled up close to the wall, snoring sweetly.  A greedy flea was stabbing the bridge of his nose, but he did not feel it, and was positively smiling, for he was dreaming that every one in the town had a cough, and was buying from him the King of Denmark’s cough-drops.  He could not have been wakened now by pinpricks or by cannon or by caresses.

The chemist’s shop was almost at the extreme end of the town, so that the chemist’s wife could see far into the fields.  She could see the eastern horizon growing pale by degrees, then turning crimson as though from a great fire.  A big broad-faced moon peeped out unexpectedly from behind bushes in the distance.  It was red (as a rule when the moon emerges from behind bushes it appears to be blushing).

Suddenly in the stillness of the night there came the sounds of footsteps and a jingle of spurs.  She could hear voices.

“That must be the officers going home to the camp from the Police Captain’s,” thought the chemist’s wife.

Soon afterwards two figures wearing officers’ white tunics came into sight:  one big and tall, the other thinner and shorter. . . .  They slouched along by the fence, dragging one leg after the other and talking loudly together.  As they passed the chemist’s shop, they walked more slowly than ever, and glanced up at the windows.

“It smells like a chemist’s,” said the thin one.  “And so it is!  Ah, I remember. . . .  I came here last week to buy some castor-oil.  There’s a chemist here with a sour face and the jawbone of an ass!  Such a jawbone, my dear fellow!  It must have been a jawbone like that Samson killed the Philistines with.”

“M’yes,” said the big one in a bass voice.  “The pharmacist is asleep.  And his wife is asleep too.  She is a pretty woman, Obtyosov.”

“I saw her.  I liked her very much. . . .  Tell me, doctor, can she possibly love that jawbone of an ass?  Can she?”

“No, most likely she does not love him,” sighed the doctor, speaking as though he were sorry for the chemist.  “The little woman is asleep behind the window, Obtyosov, what?  Tossing with the heat, her little mouth half open . . . and one little foot hanging out of bed.  I bet that fool the chemist doesn’t realise what a lucky fellow he is. . . .  No doubt he sees no difference between a woman and a bottle of carbolic!”

“I say, doctor,” said the officer, stopping.  “Let us go into the shop and buy something.  Perhaps we shall see her.”