“A similar thing once happened to me,” said Lobytko, assuming a scared expression. “I was going last year to Kovno.⁠ ⁠… I took a second-class ticket. The train was crammed, and it was impossible to sleep. I gave the guard half a rouble; he took my luggage and led me to another compartment.⁠ ⁠… I lay down and covered myself with a rug.⁠ ⁠… It was dark, you understand. Suddenly I felt someone touch me on the shoulder and breathe in my face. I made a movement with my hand and felt somebody’s elbow.⁠ ⁠… I opened my eyes and only imagine⁠—a woman. Black eyes, lips red as a prime salmon, nostrils breathing passionately⁠—a bosom like a buffer.⁠ ⁠…”

“Excuse me,” Merzlyakov interrupted calmly, “I understand about the bosom, but how could you see the lips if it was dark?”

Lobytko began trying to put himself right and laughing at Merzlyakov’s unimaginativeness. It made Ryabovitch wince. He walked away from the box, got into bed, and vowed never to confide again.

Camp life began.⁠ ⁠… The days flowed by, one very much like another. All those days Ryabovitch felt, thought, and behaved as though he were in love. Every morning when his orderly handed him water to wash with, and he sluiced his head with cold water, he thought there was something warm and delightful in his life.

In the evenings when his comrades began talking of love and women, he would listen, and draw up closer; and he wore the expression of a soldier when he hears the description of a battle in which he has taken part. And on the evenings when the officers, out on the spree with the setter⁠—Lobytko⁠—at their head, made Don Juan excursions to the “suburb,” and Ryabovitch took part in such excursions, he always was sad, felt profoundly guilty, and inwardly begged her forgiveness.⁠ ⁠… In hours of leisure or on sleepless nights, when he felt moved to recall his childhood, his father and mother⁠—everything near and dear, in fact, he invariably thought of Myestetchki, the strange horse, Von Rabbek, his wife who was like the Empress Eugénie, the dark room, the crack of light at the door.⁠ ⁠…