houlder gently.

"It's your affair, Jennechka. I daren't butt into your soul. I only
asked because you're the only being who..."

Jennka with decision suddenly jumped out of bed, seized Tamara by the
hand and said abruptly and commandingly:

"All right! Let's get out of here for a minute. I'll tell you
everything. Girls, wait for us a little while."

In the light corridor Jennka laid her hands on the shoulders of her
mate and with a distorted, suddenly blanched face, said:

"Well, then, listen here: some one has infected me with syphilis."

"Oh, my poor darling. Long?"

"Long. Do you remember, when the students were here? The same ones who
started a row with Platonov? I found out about it for the first time
then. I found out in the daytime."

"Do you know," quietly remarked Tamara, "I almost guessed about this,
and particularly then, when you went down on your knees before the
singer and talked quietly about something with her. But still, my dear
Jennechka, you must attend to yourself."

Jennka wrathfully stamped her foot and tore in half the batiste
handkerchief which she had been nervously crumpling in her hands.

"No! Not for anything! I won't infect any one of you. You may have
noticed yourself, that during the last weeks I don't dine at the common
table, and that I wash and wipe the dishes myself. That's why I'm
trying to break Manka away from me, whom, you know, I love sincerely,
in the real way. But these two-legged skunks I infect purposely, infect
every evening, ten, fifteen of them. Let them rot, let them carry the
syphilis on to their wives, mistresses, mothers--yes, yes, their
mothers also, and their fathers, and their governesses, and even their
grand-grandmothers. Let them all perish, the honest skunks!"

Tamara carefully and tenderly stroked Jennka's head. "Can it be that
you'll go the limit, Jennechka?"

"Yes. And without any mercy. All of you, however, don't have to be
afraid of me. I choose the man myself. The stupidest, the handsomest,
the richest and the most important, but not to one of you will I let
them go afterward. Oh! I make believe I'm so passionate before them,
that you'd burst out laughing if you saw. I bite them, I scratch, I cry
and shiver like an insane woman. They believe it, the pack of fools."

"It's your affair, it's your affair, Jennechka," meditatively uttered
Tamara, looking down. "Perhaps you're right, at that. Who knows? But
tell me, how did you get away from the