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Soon after midnight they went to bed. I had a fearful pain in my side that night, and I not get warm or go to sleep till morning. I could hear Orlov go from the bedroom into his study. After sitting there about an hour, he rang the bell. In my pain and exhaustion I forgot all the rules and conventions, and went to his study in my night attire, barefooted.
Orlov, in his dressing-gown and cap, was standing in the doorway, waiting for me. "When you are sent for you should come dressed," he said sternly. "Bring some fresh candles." I was about to apologise, but suddenly broke into a violent cough, and clutched at the side of the door to save myself from falling. "Are you ill?" said Orlov.
When they were seated at dinner, Zinaida Fyodorovna said to Orlov in French: "There seem to be spirits in the flat. I lost my purse in the hall to-day, and now, lo and behold, it is on my table. But it's not quite a disinterested trick of the spirits. They took out a gold coin and twenty roubles in notes."
I understand you, and if sometimes I say the opposite, it doesn't mean that I look at things differently from you; I speak the same old nonsense simply because I haven't had time yet to wear out my old clothes and prejudices. I, too, hate and despise my past, and Orlov and my love. . . . What was that love? It's positively absurd now," she said, going to the window and looking down at the canal.
"You can go, but I can't. I am in the position of a married man now." "She is a dear, she won't be angry. My dear chief, come along! It's glorious weather; there's snow and frost. . . . Upon my word, you want shaking up a bit; you are out of humour. I don't know what the devil is the matter with you. . . ." Orlov stretched, yawned, and looked at Pekarsky. "Are you going?" he said, hesitating.
"You see," I began, growing agitated, "I have here with me Zinaida Fyodorovna's daughter. . . . Hitherto I have brought her up, but, as you see, before many days I shall be an empty sound. I should like to die with the thought that she is provided for." Orlov coloured a little, frowned a little, and took a cursory and sullen glance at me.
Orlov was tired by the restaurants and the shops, and was still suffering from the same uneasiness that I had noticed in the morning. He smiled, but more from politeness than pleasure, and when she spoke of anything seriously, he agreed ironically: "Oh, yes." "Stepan, make haste and find us a good cook," she said to me.
"I'd like to reduce the whole earth to dust," dreams Orlov, "or get up a crowd of comrades and kill off all the Jews ... all, to the very last one! Or, in general, do something that would place me high above all men, so that I could spit on them from up there, and cry to them: 'Dogs! Why do you live? You're all hypocritical rascals and nothing more...."
"Turgenev teaches us in his novels that every exalted, noble-minded girl should follow the man she loves to the ends of the earth, and should serve his idea," said Orlov, screwing up his eyes ironically.
On New Year's Eve Orlov unexpectedly announced at breakfast that he was being sent to assist a senator who was on a revising commission in a certain province. "I don't want to go, but I can't find an excuse to get off," he said with vexation. "I must go; there's nothing for it." Such news instantly made Zinaida Fyodorovna's eyes look red. "Is it for long?" she asked. "Five days or so."
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