“There’s a temperament for you!  Oh, you Messalina Paphnutievna! ...  They call you Jennka, I think?  You’re a good-looking little rascal.”

Platonov returned with Pasha.  Pasha was pitiful and revolting to look at.  Her face was pale, with, a bluish cast as though the blood had run off; the glazed, half-closed eyes were smiling with a faint, idiotic smile; the parted lips seemed to resemble two frayed, red, wet rags, and she walked with a sort of timid, uncertain step, just as though with one foot she were making a large step, and with the other a small one.  She walked with docility up to the divan and with docility laid her head down on the pillow, without ceasing to smile faintly and insanely.  Even at a distance it was apparent that she was cold.

“Pardon me, gentlemen, I am going to undress,” said Lichonin, and taking his coat off he threw it over the shoulders of the prostitute.  “Tamara, give her chocolate and wine.”

Boris Sobashnikov again stood up picturesquely in the corner, in a leaning position, one leg in front of the other and his head held high.  Suddenly he spoke amid the general silence, addressing Platonov directly, in a most foppish tone: 

“Eh ...  Listen ... what’s your name? ...  This, then, must be your mistress?  Eh?” And with the tip of his boot he pointed in the direction of the recumbent Pasha.

“Wha-at?” asked Platonov in a drawl, knitting his eyebrows.

“Or else you are her lover—­it’s all one ...  What do they call this duty here?  Well, now, these same people for whom the women embroider shirts and with whom they divide their honest earnings? ...  Eh? ...”

Platonov looked at him with a heavy, intent gaze through his narrowed lids.

“Listen,” he said quietly, in a hoarse voice, slowly and ponderously separating his words.  “This isn’t the first time that you’re trying to pick a quarrel with me.  But, in the first place, I see that despite your sober appearance you are exceedingly and badly drunk; and, in the second place, I spare you for the sake of your comrades.  However, I warn you, that if you think of talking that way to me again, take your eyeglasses off.”

“What’s this stuff?” exclaimed Boris, raising his shoulders high and snorting through his nose.  “What eyeglasses?  Why eyeglasses?” But mechanically, with two extended fingers, he fixed the bow of the pince-nez on the bridge of his nose.

“Because I’m going to hit you, and the pieces may get in your eye,” said the reporter unconcernedly.

Despite the unexpectedness of such a turn of the quarrel, nobody started laughing.  Only Little White Manka oh’d in astonishment and clapped her hands.  Jennie, with avid impatience, shifted her eyes from one to the other.

“Well, now!  I’ll give you change back myself so’s you won’t like it!” roughly, altogether boyishly, cried out Sobashnikov.  “Only it’s not worth while mussing one’s hands with every ...” he wanted to add a new invective, but decided not to, “with every ...  And besides, comrades, I do not intend to stay here any longer.  I am too well brought up to be hail-fellow-well-met with such persons.”