Page:The Bet and Other Stories.djvu/100

88 some obvious absurdity, like: "I was passing on business, and I thought I'd just drop in for a second."

All three of us go indoors. First we drink tea, then our old friends, the two packs of cards, appear on the table, with a big piece of cheese, some fruit, and a bottle of Crimean champagne. The subjects of conversation are not new, but all exactly the same as they were in the winter. The university, the students, literature, the theatre all of them come in for it. The air thickens with slanders, and grows more close. It is poisoned by the breath, not of two toads as in winter, but now by all three. Besides the velvety, baritone laughter and the accordion-like giggle, the maid who waits upon us hears also the unpleasant jarring laugh of a musical comedy general: "He, he, he!"

There sometimes come fearful nights with thunder, lightning, rain, and wind, which the peasants call "sparrow-nights." There was one such sparrow-night in my own personal life. . ..

I wake after midnight and suddenly leap out of bed. Somehow it seems to me that I am going to die immediately. I do not know why, for there is no single sensation in my body which points to a quick end; but a terror presses on my soul as though I had suddenly seen a huge, ill-boding fire in the sky.