Page:The Bet and Other Stories.djvu/120

108 can work and go on the loose and laugh at nothing and talk rubbish; they are hot-headed, honest, heroic and as human beings not a bit worse than Vassiliev, who watches his every step and word, who is careful, cautious, and able to give the smallest trifle the dignity of a problem. And he made up his mind if only for one evening to live like his friends, to let himself go, and be free from his own control. Must he drink vodka? He'll drink, even if his head falls to pieces to-morrow. Must he be taken to women? He'll go. He'll laugh, play the fool, and give a joking answer to disapproving passers-by.

He came out of the restaurant laughing. He liked his friends—one in a battered hat with a wide brim who aped aesthetic disorder; the other in a sealskin cap, not very poor, with a pretence of learned Bohemia. He liked the snow, the paleness, the lamp-lights, the clear black prints which the passers' feet left on the snow. He liked the air, and above all the transparent, tender, naive, virgin tone which can be seen in nature only twice in the year: when everything is covered in snow, on the bright days in spring, and on moonlight nights when the ice breaks on the river.

"To these sad shores unknowing," he began to sing sotto-voce, "An unknown power entices."

And all the way for some reason or other he and his friends had this melody on their lips. All three hummed it mechanically out of time with each other.