om wrath and bit her lower
lip so that a row of white spots was left upon it.

"Yes," she said; "here, now, I understand Tamara. You hear, Tamara, I
apologize before you. I've often laughed over your being in love with
your thief Senka. But here, now, I'll say that of all the men the most
decent is a thief or a murderer. He doesn't hide the fact that he loves
a girlie, and, if need be, will commit a crime for her--a theft or a
murder. But these--the rest of them! All lying, falsehood, petty
cunning, depravity on the sly. The nasty beast has three families, a
wife and five children. A governess and two children abroad. The eldest
daughter from the first marriage, and a child by her. And this
everybody, everybody in town knows, save his little children. And even
they, perhaps, guess it and whisper among themselves. And, just
imagine, he's a respected person, honoured by the whole world ... My
children, it seems we've never had occasion to enter into confidences
with each other, and yet I'll tell you, that I when I was ten and a
half, was sold by my own mother in the city of Zhitomir to Doctor
Tarabukin. I kissed his hands, implored him to spare me, I cried out to
him: 'I'm little!' But he'd answer me: 'That's nothing, that's nothing:
you'll grow up.' Well, of course, there was pain, aversion, nastiness
... And he afterwards spread it around as a current anecdote. The
desperate cry of my soul."

"Well, as long as we do speak, let's speak to the end," suddenly and
calmly said Zoe, and smiled negligently and sadly. "I was deprived of
innocence by a teacher in the ministerial school, Ivan Petrovich Sus.
He simply called me over to his rooms, and his wife at that time had
gone to market for a suckling pig--it was Christmas. Treated me with
candies, and then said it was going to be one of two things: either I
must obey him in everything, or he'd at once expel me out of school for
bad conduct. But then you know yourselves, girls, how we feared the
teachers. Here they aren't terrible to us, because we do with them
whatever we want--but at that time! For then he seemed to us greater
than Czar and God."

"And me a stewdent. He was teaching the master's boys in our place.
There, where I was a servant ..."

"No, but I ..." exclaimed Niura, but, turning around unexpectedly,
remained as she was with her mouth open. Looking in the direction of
her gaze, Jennka had to wring her hands. In the doorway stood Liubka,
grown thin, with da