He'll take you to no bad place!...' 'I'll bring him back in all his maiden
innocence,' shouted Kupfer, at which Platonida Ivanovna, in spite of her
confidence, cast uneasy glances upon him. Aratov blushed up to his ears,
but ceased to make objections.

It ended by Kupfer taking him next day to spend an evening at the
princess's. But Aratov did not remain there long. To begin with, he found
there some twenty visitors, men and women, sympathetic people possibly,
but still strangers, and this oppressed him, even though he had to do very
little talking; and that, he feared above all things. Secondly, he did not
like their hostess, though she received him very graciously and simply.
Everything about her was distasteful to him: her painted face, and her
frizzed curls, and her thickly-sugary voice, her shrill giggle, her way
of rolling her eyes and looking up, her excessively low-necked dress, and
those fat, glossy fingers with their multitude of rings!... Hiding himself
away in a corner, he took from time to time a rapid survey of the faces
of all the guests, without even distinguishing them, and then stared
obstinately at his own feet. When at last a stray musician with a worn
face, long hair, and an eyeglass stuck into his contorted eyebrow sat down
to the grand piano and flinging his hands with a sweep on the keys and his
foot on the pedal, began to attack a fantasia of Liszt on a Wagner motive,
Aratov could not stand it, and stole off, bearing away in his heart a
vague, painful impression; across which, however, flitted something
incomprehensible to him, but grave and even disquieting.


III

Kupfer came next day to dinner; he did not begin, however, expatiating
on the preceding evening, he did not even reproach Aratov for his hasty