“Need?  Only need?  That means, just as for that chamber which stands under my bed?”

“No, why so?” retorted Kolya, with a kindly laugh.  “I liked you very much...  From the very first time...  If you will, I’m even... a little in love with you... at least, I never stayed with any of the others.”

“Well, all right!  But then, the first time, could it possibly have been need?”

“No, perhaps, it wasn’t need even; but somehow, vaguely, I wanted woman...  My friends talked me into it...  Many had already gone here before me...  So then, I too...”

“But, now, weren’t you ashamed the first time?”

Kolya became confused; all this interrogation was to him unpleasant, oppressive.  He felt, that this was not the empty, idle bed talk, so well known to him, out of his small experience; but something else, of more import.

“Let’s say... not that I was ashamed... well, but still I felt kind of awkward.  I drank that time to get up courage.”

Jennie again lay down on her side; leaned upon her elbow, and again looked at him from time to time, near at hand and intently.

“But tell me, sweetie,” she asked, in a barely audible voice, so that the cadet with difficulty made out her words, “tell me one thing more; but the fact of your paying money, these filthy two roubles—­do you understand?—­paying them for love, so that I might caress, kiss you, give all my body to you—­didn’t you feel ashamed to pay for that?  Never?”

“Oh, my God!  What strange questions you put to me to-day!  But then they all pay money!  Not I, then some one else would have paid—­ isn’t it all the same to you?”

“And have you been in love with any one, Kolya?  Confess!  Well, now, if not in real earnest, then just so... at soul...  Have you done any courting?  Brought little flowers of some sort...  Strolled arm-in-arm with her under the moon?  Wasn’t that so?”

“Well, yes,” said Koiya in a sedate bass.  “What follies don’t happen in one’s youth!  It’s a matter anyone can understand...”

“Some sort of a little first cousin?  An educated young lady?  A boarding school miss?  A high school girl? ...  There has been, hasn’t there?”

“Well, yes, of course—­everybody has them.”

“Why, you wouldn’t have touched her, would you? ...  You’d have spared her?  Well, if she had only said to you:  take me, but only give me two roubles—­what would you have said to her?”

“I don’t understand you, Jennka!” Gladishev suddenly grew angry.  “What are you putting on airs for!  What sort of comedy are you trying to put over!  Honest to God, I’ll dress myself at once and go away.”

“Wait a while, wait a while, Kolya!  One more, one more, the last, the very, very last question.”

“Oh, you!” growled Kolya displeased.

“And could you never imagine... well, imagine it right now, even for a second... that your family has suddenly grown poor, become ruined.  You’d have to earn your bread by copying papers; or, now, let’s say, through carpenter or blacksmith work; and your sister was to go wrong, like all of us... yes, yes, yours, your own sister... if some blockhead seduced her and she was to go travelling... from hand to hand... what would you say then?”