and laugh without reason, and talk nonsense; they are warm, honest, self-sacrificing, and as men are in no way inferior to himself, Vassilyev, who watched over every step he took and every word he uttered, who was fastidious and cautious, and ready to raise every trifle to the level of a problem.  And he longed for one evening to live as his friends did, to open out, to let himself loose from his own control.  If vodka had to be drunk, he would drink it, though his head would be splitting next morning.  If he were taken to the women he would go.  He would laugh, play the fool, gaily respond to the passing advances of strangers in the street....

He went out of the restaurant laughing.  He liked his friends—­one in a crushed broad-brimmed hat, with an affectation of artistic untidiness; the other in a sealskin cap, a man not poor, though he affected to belong to the Bohemia of learning.  He liked the snow, the pale street lamps, the sharp black tracks left in the first snow by the feet of the passers-by.  He liked the air, and especially that limpid, tender, naive, as it were virginal tone, which can be seen in nature only twice in the year—­when everything is covered with snow, and in spring on bright days and moonlight evenings when the ice breaks on the river.

     “Against my will an unknown force,
     Has led me to these mournful shores,”

he hummed in an undertone.

And the tune for some reason haunted him and his friends all the way, and all three of them hummed it mechanically, not in time with one another.

Vassilyev’s imagination was picturing how, in another ten minutes, he and his friends would knock at a door; how by little dark passages and dark rooms they would steal in to the women; how, taking advantage of the darkness, he would strike a match, would light up and see the face of a martyr and a guilty smile.  The unknown, fair or dark, would certainly have her hair down and be wearing a white dressing-jacket; she would be panic-stricken by the light, would be fearfully confused, and would say:  “For God’s sake, what are you doing!  Put it out!” It would all be dreadful, but interesting and new.

II

The friends turned out of Trubnoy Square into Gratchevka, and soon reached the side street which Vassilyev only knew by reputation.  Seeing two rows of houses with brightly lighted windows and wide-open doors, and hearing gay strains of pianos and violins, sounds which floated out from every door and mingled in a strange chaos, as though an unseen orchestra were tuning up in the darkness above the roofs, Vassilyev was surprised and said: 

“What a lot of houses!”

“That’s nothing,” said the medical student.  “In London there are ten times as many.  There are about a hundred thousand such women there.”