There was nothing left for the assistant procurator but to acknowledge himself in the wrong and go back to his spouse.

“I say, Pelagea,” he said, “you had my dressing-gown to brush.  Where is it?”

“Oh, I am so sorry, sir; I forgot to put it on your chair.  It’s hanging on a peg near the stove.”

Gagin felt for the dressing-gown by the stove, put it on, and went quietly back to his room.

When her husband went out Marya Mihalovna got into bed and waited.  For the first three minutes her mind was at rest, but after that she began to feel uneasy.

“What a long time he’s gone,” she thought.  “It’s all right if he is there . . . that immoral man . . . but if it’s a burglar?”

And again her imagination drew a picture of her husband going into the dark kitchen . . . a blow with an axe . . . dying without uttering a single sound . . . a pool of blood! . . .

Five minutes passed . . . five and a half . . . at last six. . . .  A cold sweat came out on her forehead.

“Basile!” she shrieked, “Basile!”

“What are you shouting for?  I am here.”  She heard her husband’s voice and steps.  “Are you being murdered?”

The assistant procurator went up to the bedstead and sat down on the edge of it.

“There’s nobody there at all,” he said.  “It was your fancy, you queer creature. . . .  You can sleep easy, your fool of a Pelagea is as virtuous as her mistress.  What a coward you are!  What a . . . .”

And the deputy procurator began teasing his wife.  He was wide awake now and did not want to go to sleep again.

“You are a coward!” he laughed.  “You’d better go to the doctor to-morrow and tell him about your hallucinations.  You are a neurotic!”

“What a smell of tar,” said his wife—­“tar or something . . . onion . . . cabbage soup!”

“Y-yes!  There is a smell . . .  I am not sleepy.  I say, I’ll light the candle. . . .  Where are the matches?  And, by the way, I’ll show you the photograph of the procurator of the Palace of Justice.  He gave us all a photograph when he said good-bye to us yesterday, with his autograph.”

Gagin struck a match against the wall and lighted a candle.  But before he had moved a step from the bed to fetch the photographs he heard behind him a piercing, heartrending shriek.  Looking round, he saw his wife’s large eyes fastened upon him, full of amazement, horror, and wrath. . . .

“You took your dressing-gown off in the kitchen?” she said, turning pale.

“Why?”

“Look at yourself!”

The deputy procurator looked down at himself, and gasped.

Flung over his shoulders was not his dressing-gown, but the fireman’s overcoat.  How had it come on his shoulders?  While he was settling that question, his wife’s imagination was drawing another picture, awful and impossible:  darkness, stillness, whispering, and so on, and so on.