The following day I only had a passing glimpse of Zina?da: she was driving somewhere with the old princess in a cab. But I saw Lushin, who, however, barely vouchsafed me a greeting, and Malevsky. The young count grinned, and began affably talking to me. Of all those who visited at the lodge, he alone had succeeded in forcing his way into our house, and had favourably impressed my mother. My father did not take to him, and treated him with a civility almost insulting.

‘Ah, monsieur le page,’ began Malevsky, ‘delighted to meet you. What is your lovely queen doing?’

His fresh handsome face was so detestable to me at that moment, and he looked at me with such contemptuous amusement that I did not answer him at all.

‘Are you still angry?’ he went on. ‘You’ve no reason to be. It wasn’t I who called you a page, you know, and pages attend queens especially. But allow me to remark that you perform your duties very badly.’

‘How so?’

‘Pages ought to be inseparable from their mistresses; pages ought to know everything they do, they ought, indeed, to watch over them,’ he added, lowering his voice, ‘day and night.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What do I mean? I express myself pretty clearly, I fancy. Day and night. By day it’s not so much matter; it’s light, and people are about in the daytime; but by night, then look out for misfortune. I advise you not to sleep at nights and to watch, watch with all your energies. You remember, in the garden, by night, at the fountain, that’s where there’s need to look out. You will thank me.’

Malevsky laughed and turned his back on me. He, most likely, attached no great importance to what he had said to me, he had a reputation for mystifying, and was noted for his power of taking people in at masquerades, which was greatly augmented by the almost unconscious falsity in which his whole nature was steeped. . . . He only wanted to tease me; but every word he uttered was a poison that ran through my veins. The blood rushed to my head. ‘Ah! so that’s it!’ I said to myself; ‘good! So there was reason for me to feel drawn into the garden! That shan’t be so!’ I cried aloud, and struck myself on the chest with my fist, though precisely what should not be so I could not have said. ‘Whether Malevsky himself goes into the garden,’ I thought (he was bragging, perhaps; he has insolence enough for that), ‘or some one else (the fence of our garden was very low, and there was no difficulty in getting over it), anyway, if any one falls into my hands, it will be the worse for him! I don’t advise any one to meet me! I will prove to all the world and to her, the traitress (I actually used the word ‘traitress’) that I can be revenged!’

I returned to my own room, took out of the writing-table an English knife I had recently bought, felt its sharp edge, and knitting my brows with an air of cold and concentrated determination, thrust it into my pocket, as though doing such deeds was nothing out of the way for me, and not the first time. My heart heaved angrily, and felt heavy as a stone. All day long I kept a scowling brow and lips tightly compressed, and was continually walking up and down, clutching, with my hand in my pocket, the knife, which was warm from my grasp, while I prepared myself beforehand for something terrible. These new unknown sensations so occupied and even delighted me, that I hardly thought of Zina?da herself. I was continually haunted by Aleko, the young gipsy —‘Where art thou going, young handsome man? Lie there,’ and then, ‘thou art all besprent with blood. . . . Oh, what hast thou done? . . . Naught!’ With what a cruel smile I repeated that ‘Naught!’ My father was not at home; but my mother, who had for some time past been in an almost continual state of dumb exasperation, noticed my gloomy and heroic aspect, and said to me at supper, ‘Why are you sulking like a mouse in a meal-tub?’ I merely smiled condescendingly in reply, and thought, ‘If only they knew!’ It struck eleven; I wen............