However, all the men strove for the very same thing—­even the most wretched, monstrous, misshapen and impotent of them—­and ancient experience had long ago taught the women to imitate with voice and movements the most flaming passion, retaining in the most tempestuous minutes the fullest sang froid.

“You might at least order the musicians to play a polka.  Let the girls dance a little,” asked Liuba grumblingly.

That suited him.  Under cover of the music, amid the jostling of the dances, it was far more convenient to get up courage, arise, and lead one of the girls out of the drawing room, than to do it amid the general silence and the finical immobility.

“And how much does that cost?” he asked cautiously.

“A quadrille is half a rouble; but ordinary dances are thirty kopecks.  Is it all right then?”

“Well, of course...if you please...I don’t begrudge it,” he agreed, pretending to be generous...

“Whom do you speak to?”

“Why, over there—­to the musicians.”

“Why not? ...  I’ll do it with pleasure...Mister musician, something in the light dances, if you please,” he said, laying down his silver on the pianoforte.

“What will you order?” asked Isaiah Savvich, putting the money away in his pocket.  “Waltz, polka, polka-mazourka?”

“Well...Something sort of...”

“A waltz, a waltz!” Vera, a great lover of dancing, shouted from her place.

“No, a polka! ...  A waltz! ...  A vengerka! ...  A waltz!” demanded others.

“Let them play a polka,” decided Liuba in a capricious tone.  “Isaiah Savvich, play a little polka, please.  This is my husband, and he is ordering fox me,” she added, embracing the pedagogue by the neck.  “Isn’t that true, daddy?”

But he freed himself from under her arm, drawing his head in like a turtle, and she without the least offence went to dance with Niura.  Three other couples were also whirling about.  In the dances all the girls tried to hold the waist as straight as possible, and the head as immobile as possible, with a complete unconcern in their faces, which constituted one of the conditions of the good taste of the establishment.  Under cover of the slight noise the teacher walked up to Little Manka.

“Let’s go?” he said, offering her his bent arm.

“Let’s go,” answered she, laughing.

She brought him into her room, gotten up with all the coquettishness of a bedroom in a brothel of the medium sort, with a bureau, covered with a knit scarf, and upon it a mirror, a bouquet of paper flowers, a few empty bonbonierres, a powder box, a faded photograph of a young man with white eyebrows and eyelashes and a haughtily astonished face, as well as several visiting cards.  Above the bed, which is covered with a pink pique blanket, along the wall, is nailed up a rug with a representation of a Turkish sultan luxuriating in his harem, a narghili in his mouth; on the walls, several more photographs of dashing men of the waiter and actor type; a pink lantern hangs down from the ceiling by chains; there are also a round table under a carpet cover, three vienna chairs, and an enameled bowl with a pitcher of the same sort in the corner on a tabouret, behind the bed.