thought of "him" arose,
there surged up in his heart horror, disgust, and wounded pride. He
groaned aloud, and tried to think of something else.

"No, it is impossible; I will hand over the money to Peter to give her
monthly. And as for me, I have no longer a daughter."

And again a curious feeling overpowered him: a mixture of self-pity
at the recollection of his love for her, and of fury against her for
causing him this anguish.

II

DURING the last year Lisa had without doubt lived through more than in
all the preceding twenty-five. Suddenly she had realised the emptiness
of her whole life. It rose before her, base and sordid--this life at
home and among the rich set in St. Petersburg--this animal existence
that never sounded the depths, but only touched the shallows of life.

It was well enough for a year or two, or perhaps even three. But when it
went on for seven or eight years, with its parties, balls, concerts, and
suppers; with its costumes and coiffures to display the charms of the
body; with its adorers old and young, all alike seemingly possessed of
some unaccountable right to have everything, to laugh at everything; and
with its summer months spent in the same way, everything yielding but a
superficial pleasure, even music and reading merely touching upon life's
problems, but never solving them--all this holding out no promise of
change, and losing its charm more and more--she began to despair. She
had desperate moods when she longed to die.

Her friends directed her thoughts to charity. On the one hand, she
saw poverty which was real and repulsive, and a sham poverty even more
repulsive and pitiable; on the other, she saw the terrible indifference
of the lady patronesses who came in carriages and gowns worth thousands.
Life became to her more and more unbearable. She yearned for something
real, for life itself--not this playing at living, not this skimming
life of its cream. Of real life there was none. The best of her memories
was her love for the little cadet Koko. That had been a good, honest,
straight-forward impulse, and now there was nothing like it. There could
not be. She grew more and more depressed, and in this gloomy mood she
went to visit an aunt in Finland. The fresh scenery and surroundings,
the people strangely different to her own, appealed to her at any rate
as a new experience.

How and when it all began she could not clearly remember. Her aunt had
another guest, a Swede. He talk