In one corner of the room, where the foliage was thickest and tallest, under a pink awning like a funeral canopy, stood a bed not yet made, with the bedclothes still in disorder.  Close by on two arm-chairs lay heaps of crumpled feminine garments.  Petticoats and sleeves with rumpled lace and flounces were trailing on the carpet, on which here and there lay bits of white tape, cigarette-ends, and the papers of caramels. . . .  Under the bed the toes, pointed and square, of slippers of all kinds peeped out in a long row.  And it seemed to the lieutenant that the scent of the jasmine came not from the flowers, but from the bed and the slippers.

“And what is the sum owing?” asked Susanna Moiseyevna.

“Two thousand three hundred.”

“Oho!” said the Jewess, showing another large black eye.  “And you call that—­a small sum!  However, it’s just the same paying it to-day or paying it in a week, but I’ve had so many payments to make in the last two months since my father’s death. . . .  Such a lot of stupid business, it makes my head go round!  A nice idea!  I want to go abroad, and they keep forcing me to attend to these silly things.  Vodka, oats . . .” she muttered, half closing her eyes, “oats, bills, percentages, or, as my head-clerk says, ‘percentage.’ . . .  It’s awful.  Yesterday I simply turned the excise officer out.  He pesters me with his Tralles.  I said to him:  ’Go to the devil with your Tralles!  I can’t see any one!’ He kissed my hand and went away.  I tell you what:  can’t your cousin wait two or three months?”

“A cruel question!” laughed the lieutenant.  “My cousin can wait a year, but it’s I who cannot wait!  You see, it’s on my own account I’m acting, I ought to tell you.  At all costs I must have money, and by ill-luck my cousin hasn’t a rouble to spare.  I’m forced to ride about and collect debts.  I’ve just been to see a peasant, our tenant; here I’m now calling on you; from here I shall go on to somewhere else, and keep on like that until I get together five thousand roubles.  I need money awfully!”

“Nonsense!  What does a young man want with money?  Whims, mischief.  Why, have you been going in for dissipation?  Or losing at cards?  Or are you getting married?”

“You’ve guessed!” laughed the lieutenant, and rising slightly from his seat, he clinked his spurs.  “I really am going to be married.”

Susanna Moiseyevna looked intently at her visitor, made a wry face, and sighed.

“I can’t make out what possesses people to get married!” she said, looking about her for her pocket-handkerchief.  “Life is so short, one has so little freedom, and they must put chains on themselves!”

“Every one has his own way of looking at things. . . .”

“Yes, yes, of course; every one has his own way of looking at things . . . .  But, I say, are you really going to marry some one poor?  Are you passionately in love?  And why must you have five thousand?  Why won’t four do, or three?”