the piano, laying out a game of patience on her lap. She took no notice
whatever of the visitors.

"Where are the other young ladies?" asked the medical student.

"They are having their tea," said the fair girl. "Stepan," she called,
"go and tell the young ladies some students have come!"

A little later a third young lady came into the room. She was wearing
a bright red dress with blue stripes. Her face was painted thickly
and unskillfully, her brow was hidden under her hair, and there was an
unblinking, frightened stare in her eyes. As she came in, she began
at once singing some song in a coarse, powerful contralto. After her a
fourth appeared, and after her a fifth....

In all this Vassilyev saw nothing new or interesting. It seemed to him
that that room, the piano, the looking-glass in its cheap gilt frame,
the bunch of white ribbon, the dress with the blue stripes, and the
blank indifferent faces, he had seen before and more than once. Of the
darkness, the silence, the secrecy, the guilty smile, of all that he had
expected to meet here and had dreaded, he saw no trace.

Everything was ordinary, prosaic, and uninteresting. Only one thing
faintly stirred his curiosity--the terrible, as it were intentionally
designed, bad taste which was visible in the cornices, in the absurd
pictures, in the dresses, in the bunch of ribbons. There was something
characteristic and peculiar in this bad taste.

"How poor and stupid it all is!" thought Vassilyev. "What is there in
all this trumpery I see now that can tempt a normal man and excite