I had learned much from what I had seen at the Zasyekins; their disorderly ways, tallow candle-ends, broken knives and forks, grumpy Vonifaty, and shabby maid-servants, the manners of the old princess – all their strange mode of life no longer struck me� . But what I was dimly discerning now in Zina�da, I could never get used to� . ‘An adventuress!’ my mother had said of her one day. An adventuress – she, my idol, my divinity? This word stabbed me, I tried to get away from it into my pillow, I was indignant – and at the same time what would I not have agreed to, what would I not have given only to be that lucky fellow at the fountain!� My blood was on fire and boiling within me. ‘The garden � the fountain,’ I mused� . ‘I will go into the garden.’ I dressed quickly and slipped out of the house.