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Will you give me a half for a cabby? To-morrow you'll come to me again. Isn't that so, sweetie?" Lichonin was abashed. So strange did the intervention of this silent, apparently sleepy girl, appear to him. Of course, he did not grasp that she was actuated by an instinctive, unconscious pity for a man who had not had enough sleep; or, perhaps, a professional regard for the sleep of other people.
Make an effort, gentlemen; advise something." "We must know what she's fitted for," said Simanovsky. "For she must have been doing something before getting into the house." Lichonin, with an air of hopelessness, spread out his hands. "Almost nothing. She can sew just the least bit, just like any country lass. Why, she wasn't fifteen when some government clerk led her astray.
It was dark in the room, because the window curtains were lowered. It smelt of mice, kerosene, yesterday's vegetable soup, long-.used bed linen, stale tobacco smoke. In the half-dusk some one who could not be seen was snoring deafeningly and with variations. Lichonin raised the shade.
But it seemed a bore to all of them to go in the middle of the night to a family apartment, to enter on tiptoes up the stairs and to talk in whispers all the time. "Tell you what, brethren ... Let's better ride to the girlies, that will be nearer the mark," said peremptorily Lichonin, an old student, a tall, stooping, morose and bearded fellow.
It's understood, I alone won't be able to manage all this. I expect help from you; and after that, whatever God may will." "Oh, well," said Simanovsky, "the work is new, not threadbare; and how can we know the unknowable perhaps you, Lichonin, will become the spiritual father of a good being. I, too, offer my services."
But she would laugh, get angry, strike his hands, and threaten to complain to Lichonin. "V-va!" the prince would spread out his hands. "What is Lichonin? Lichonin is my friend, my brother, and bosom crony. But then, does he know what loffe is? Is it possible that you northern people understand loffe? It's we, Georgians, who are created for loffe. Look, Liubka!
And all of the remaining houses on the deserted street, desolated as though after a pestilence, were closed as well. With a contracting heart Lichonin pulled the bell-handle. A maid, barefooted, with skirt caught up, with a wet rag in her hand, with face striped from dirt, answered the bell she had just been washing the floor. "I'd like to see Jennka," timidly requested Lichonin.
It all turned out to be silly, tactless, and, in any case, premature. But everything in life is reparable. A person will sustain the heaviest, most disgraceful things; but, time passes, and they are recalled as trifles ..." To his amazement, Liubka was not especially struck, and did not at all become overjoyed when he triumphantly showed her the passport. She was only glad to see Lichonin again.
And so, while taking the light grey overcoat off Yarchenko, he sombrely and with much significance snarled back in answer to Lichonin's banter: "I am no citizen here, but the bouncer." "Upon which I have the honour to congratulate you," answered Lichonin with a polite bow. There were many people in the drawing room.
It was just at this very minute that Lichonin walked into the room. Of course, at soul he did not admit to himself that this minute he would commit a vileness; but only somehow from the side, at a distance, reflected that his face was pale, and that his immediate words would be tragic and of great significance.
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