For some reason he could not get the word “Friday” out of his head; he could think of nothing but Friday, and the only thing that was clear to him, not in his brain but somewhere in his heart, was that he would not get off on Saturday.  Before him stood Nikodim Alexandritch, very neat, with his hair combed over his temples, saying: 

“Please take something to eat. . . .”

Marya Konstantinovna showed the visitors Katya’s school report and said, drawling: 

“It’s very, very difficult to do well at school nowadays!  So much is expected . . .”

“Mamma!” groaned Katya, not knowing where to hide her confusion at the praises of the company.

Laevsky, too, looked at the report and praised it.  Scripture, Russian language, conduct, fives and fours, danced before his eyes, and all this, mixed with the haunting refrain of “Friday,” with the carefully combed locks of Nikodim Alexandritch and the red cheeks of Katya, produced on him a sensation of such immense overwhelming boredom that he almost shrieked with despair and asked himself:  “Is it possible, is it possible I shall not get away?”

They put two card tables side by side and sat down to play post.  Laevsky sat down too.

“Friday . . .  Friday . . .” he kept thinking, as he smiled and took a pencil out of his pocket.  “Friday. . . .”

He wanted to think over his position, and was afraid to think.  It was terrible to him to realise that the doctor had detected him in the deception which he had so long and carefully concealed from himself.  Every time he thought of his future he would not let his thoughts have full rein.  He would get into the train and set off, and thereby the problem of his life would be solved, and he did not let his thoughts go farther.  Like a far-away dim light in the fields, the thought sometimes flickered in his mind that in one of the side-streets of Petersburg, in the remote future, he would have to have recourse to a tiny lie in order to get rid of Nadyezhda Fyodorovna and pay his debts; he would tell a lie only once, and then a completely new life would begin.  And that was right:  at the price of a small lie he would win so much truth.

Now when by his blunt refusal the doctor had crudely hinted at his deception, he began to understand that he would need deception not only in the remote future, but to-day, and to-morrow, and in a month’s time, and perhaps up to the very end of his life.  In fact, in order to get away he would have to lie to Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, to his creditors, and to his superiors in the Service; then, in order to get money in Petersburg, he would have to lie to his mother, to tell her that he had already broken with Nadyezhda Fyodorovna; and his mother would not give him more than five hundred roubles, so he had already deceived the doctor, as he would not be in a position to pay him back the money within a short time.  Afterwards, when Nadyezhda Fyodorovna came to Petersburg, he would