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RUDIN up to her, and bending over the table as though he were examining the papers, whispered:

‘It is all like a dream, isn’t it? I absolutely must see you alone—if only for a minute.’ He turned to Mlle. Boncourt ‘Here,’ he said to her, ‘this is the article you were looking for,’ and again bending towards Natalya, he added in a whisper, ‘Try to be near the terrace in the lilac arbour about ten o’clock; I will wait for you.’

Pigasov was the hero of the evening. Rudin left him in possession of the field. He afforded Darya Mihailovna much entertainment; first he told a story of one of his neighbours who, having been henpecked by his wife for thirty years, had grown so womanish that one day in crossing a little puddle when Pigasov was present, he put out his hand and picked up the skirt of his coat, as women do with their petticoats. Then he turned to another gentleman who to begin with had been a freemason, then a hypochondriac, and then wanted to be a banker.

‘How were you a freemason, Philip Stepanitch?’ Pigasov asked him.

‘You know how; I wore the nail of my little finger long.’ 143