"Grisha, don't go, wait for us," the artist shouted to him and
disappeared.

The medical student disappeared soon after.

"Yes, one must make an effort to understand, one mustn't be like
this...." Vassilyev went on thinking.

And he began gazing at each of the women with strained attention,
looking for a guilty smile. But either he did not know how to read their
faces, or not one of these women felt herself to be guilty; he read on
every face nothing but a blank expression of everyday vulgar boredom and
complacency. Stupid faces, stupid smiles, harsh, stupid voices, insolent
movements, and nothing else. Apparently each of them had in the past a
romance with an accountant based on underclothes for fifty roubles, and
looked for no other charm in the present but coffee, a dinner of three
courses, wines, quadrilles, sleeping till two in the afternoon....

Finding no guilty smile, Vassilyev began to look whether there was not
one intelligent face. And his attention was caught by one pale, rather
sleepy, exhausted-looking face.... It was a dark woman, not very
young, wearing a dress covered with spangles; she was sitting in an
easy-chair, looking at the floor lost in thought. Vassilyev walked from
one corner of the room to the other, and, as though casually, sat down
beside her.

"I must begin with something trivial," he thought, "and pass to what is
serious...."

"What a pretty dress you have," and with his finger he touched the gold