Insarov decided to await more positive news, and began to make preparations for departure. The difficulty was a serious one. For him personally there were no obstacles. He had only to ask for a passport — but how would it be with Elena? To get her a passport in the legal way was impossible. Should he marry her secretly, and should they then go and present themselves to the parents? . . . ‘They would let us go then,’ he thought ‘But if they did not? We would go all the same. But suppose they were to make a complaint . . . if . . . No, better try to get a passport somehow.’

He decided to consult (of course mentioning no names) one of his acquaintances, an attorney, retired from practice, or perhaps struck off the rolls, an old and experienced hand at all sorts of clandestine business. This worthy person did not live near; Insarov was a whole hour in getting to him in a very sorry droshky, and, to make matters worse, he did not find him at home; and on his way back got soaked to the skin by a sudden downpour of rain. The next morning, in spite of a rather severe headache, Insarov set off a second time to call on the retired attorney. The retired attorney listened to him attentively, taking snuff from a snuff-box decorated with a picture of a full-bosomed nymph, and glancing stealthily at his visitor with his sly, and also snuff-coloured little eyes; he heard him to the end, and then demanded ‘greater definiteness in the statement of the facts of the case’; and observing that Insarov was unwilling to launch into particulars (it was against the grain that he had come to him at all) he confined himself to the advice to provide himself above all things with ‘the needful,’ and asked him to come to him again, ‘when you have,’ he added, sniffing at the snuff in the open snuff-box, ‘augmented your confidence and decreased your diffidence’ (he talked with a broad accent). ‘A passport,’ he added, as though to himself, ‘is a thing that can be arranged; you go a journey, for instance; who’s to tell whether you’re Marya Bredihin or Karolina Vogel-meier?’ A feeling of nausea came over Insarov, but he thanked the attorney, and promised to come to him again in a day or two.

The same evening he went to the Stahovs. Anna Vassilyevna met him cordially, reproached him a little for having quite forgotten them, and, finding him pale, inquired especially after his health. Nikolai Artemyevitch did not say a single word to him; he only stared at him with elaborately careless curiosity; Shubin treated him coldly; but Elena astounded him. She was expecting him; she had put on for him the very dress she wore on the day of their first interview in the chapel; but she welcomed him so calmly, and was so polite and carelessly gay, that no one looking at her could have believed that this girl’s fate was already decided, and that it was only the secret consciousness of happy love that gave fire to her features, lightness and charm to all her gestures. She poured out tea in Zoya’s place, jested, chattered; she knew Shubin would be watching her, that Insarov was incapable of wearing a mask, and incapable of appearing indifferent, and she had ............