joined; while the other was of thin gold wire
with an almandine.

"As for my underwear, Tamarochka--you give it to Annushka, the
chambermaid. Let her wash it out well and wear it in good health, in
memory of me."

The two of them were sitting in Tamara's room. Jennka had in the very
morning sent after cognac; and now slowly, as though lazily, was
imbibing wine-glass after wine-glass, eating lemon and a piece of sugar
after drinking. Tamara was observing this for the first time and
wondered, because Jennka had always disliked wine, and drank very
rarely; and then only at the constraint of guests.

"What are you giving stuff away so to-day?" asked Tamara. "Just as
though you'd gotten ready to die, or to go into a convent?"

"Yes, and I will go away," answered Jennka listlessly. "I am weary,
Tamarochka! ..."

"Well, which one of us has a good time?"

"Well, no! ... It isn't so much that I'm weary; but somehow
everything--everything is all the same ... I look at you, at the table,
at the bottle; at my hands and feet; and I'm thinking, that all this is
alike and everything is to no purpose ... There's no sense in anything
... Just like on some old, old picture. Look there--there's a soldier
walking on the street, but it's all one to me, as though they had wound
up a doll, and it's moving ... And that he's wet under the ram, is also
all one to me ... And that he'll die, and I'll die, and you, Tamara,
will die--in this also I see nothing frightful, nothing amazing... So
simple and wearisome is everything to me..."

Jennka was silent for a while; drank one more wine-glass; sucked the
sugar, and, still looking out at the street, suddenly asked:

"Tell me, please, Tamara, I've never asked you about it--from where did
you get in here, into the house? You don't at all resemble all of us;
you know everything; for everything that turns up you have a good,
clever remark ... Even French, now--how well you spoke it that time!
But none of us knows anything at all about you ... Who are you?"

"Darling Jennechka, really, it's not worth while ... A life like any
life ... I went to boarding school; was a governess; sang in a choir;
then kept a shooting gallery in a summer garden; and then got mixed up
with a certain charlatan and taught myself to shoot with a Winchester
... I traveled with circuses--I represented an American Amazon. I used
to shoot splendidly ... Then I found myself in a monastery. There I
passed two years ... I'