Five rich young men went at three o’clock in the morning to a ball in Petersburg to have a good time.
Much champagne was drunk; a majority of the gentlemen were very young; the girls were pretty; a pianist and a fiddler played indefatigably one polka after another; there was no cease to the noise of conversation and dancing. But there was a sense of awkwardness and constraint; everyone felt somehow or other—and this is not unusual—that all was not as it should be.
There were several attempts made to make things more lively, but simulated liveliness is much worse than melancholy.
One of the five young men, who was more discontented than anyone else, both with himself and with the others, and who had been feeling all the evening a sense of disgust, took his hat, and went out noiselessly on purpose, intending to go home.
There was no one in the anteroom, but in the next room at the door he heard two voices disputing. The young man paused, and listened.
“It is impossible, there are guests in there,” said a woman’s voice.
“Come, let me in, please. I will not do any harm,” urged a man in a gentle voice.
“Indeed I will not without madame’s permission,” said the woman. “Where are you going? Oh, what a man you are!”
The door was flung open, and on the threshold appeared the figure of a stranger. Seeing a guest, the maid ceased to detain the man; and the