The dark woman stretched, and watched with sleepy eyes the footman who
was bringing a trayful of glasses and seltzer water.

"Stand me a glass of porter," she said, and yawned again.

"Porter," thought Vassilyev. "And what if your brother or mother walked
in at this moment? What would you say? And what would they say? There
would be porter then, I imagine...."

All at once there was the sound of weeping. From the adjoining room,
from which the footman had brought the seltzer water, a fair man with
a red face and angry eyes ran in quickly. He was followed by the tall,
stout "madam," who was shouting in a shrill voice:

"Nobody has given you leave to slap girls on the cheeks! We have
visitors better than you, and they don't fight! Impostor!"

A hubbub arose. Vassilyev was frightened and turned pale. In the next
room there was the sound of bitter, genuine weeping, as though of
someone insulted. And he realized that there were real people living
here who, like people everywhere else, felt insulted, suffered, wept,
and cried for help. The feeling of oppressive hate and disgust gave way
to an acute feeling of pity and anger against the aggressor. He rushed
into the room where there was weeping. Across rows of bottles on a
marble-top table he distinguished a suffering face, wet with tears,
stretched out his hands towards that face, took a step towards the
table, but at once drew back in horror. The weeping girl was drunk.

As he made his way though the noisy crowd gathered about the fair man,