“Oh, you do not really mean it,” he continued; “and the absence of women⁠—I mean femmes comme il faut 111 ⁠—is not that a terrible privation? I don’t know what I wouldn’t give to transport myself into a drawing-room now, and take a peep, though but through a crack, at a charming woman.”

He was silent a moment and drank another cup of wine.

“Oh God, oh God! It is still possible we may some day meet again in Petersburg among men, live with human beings, with women.”