Suddenly (it happens at times) you plunge into sweet, warm sleep⁠—when all at once, as if something pricks you, you tremble and your eyes are again widely open. So it was now; there on the floor in her room were the pink checks stamped with traces of footsteps, one of them bore the letter F and some figures.⁠ ⁠… Plus and minus fused within my mind into one lump.⁠ ⁠… I could not say even now what sort of a feeling it was but I crushed her so that she cried out with pain.⁠ ⁠…

One more minute out of these ten or fifteen; her head thrown back, lying on the bright white pillow, her eyes half closed, a sharp, sweet line of teeth.⁠ ⁠… And all this reminded me in an irresistible, absurd, torturing way about something forbidden, something not permissible at that moment. More tenderly, more cruelly, I pressed her to myself, more bright grew the blue traces of my fingers.⁠ ⁠…

She said, without opening her eyes (I noticed this), “They say you went to see the Well-Doer yesterday, is it true?”