Chapter XII.
With pain at soul, with malice and repulsion toward himself and Liubka, and, it would seem, toward all the world, Lichonin without undressing flung himself upon the wooden, lopsided, sagging divan and even gnashed his teeth from the smarting shame. Sleep would not come to him, while his thoughts revolved around this fool action--as he himself called the carrying off of Liubka,--in which an atrocious vaudeville had been so disgustingly intertwined with a deep drama. "It's all one," he stubbornly repeated to himself. "Once I have given my promise, I'll see the business through to the end. And, of course, that which has occurred just now will never, never be repeated! My God, who hasn't fallen, giving in to a momentary laxity of the nerves? Some philosopher or other has expressed a deep, rema
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