nce has already
burst ..."

But Jennka was nowhere--neither in her room, nor in Tamara's. They
looked into other chambers, in all the out-of-the-way corners ... But
she did not prove to be even there.

"We must look in the water-closet ... Perhaps she's there?" surmised
Zoe.

But this institution was locked from the inside with a bolt. Emma
Edwardovna knocked on the door with her fist.

"Jennie, do come out at last! What foolishness is this?"

And, raising her voice, she cried out impatiently and threateningly:

"Do you hear, you swine? ... Come out this minute--the doctor's
waiting!"

But there was no answer of any sort.

All exchanged glances with fear in their eyes, with one and the same
thought in mind.

Emma Edwardovna shook the door by the brass knob, but the door did not
yield.

"Go after Simeon!" Anna Markovna directed.

Simeon was called ... He came, sleepy and morose, as was his wont. By
the distracted faces of the girls and the housekeepers, he already saw
that some misunderstanding or other had occurred, in which his
professional cruelty and strength were required. When they explained to
him what the matter was, he silently took the door-knob with both
hands, braced himself against the wall, and gave a yank.

The knob remained in his hands; and he himself, staggering backward,
almost fell to the floor on his back.

"A-a, hell!" he began to growl in a stifled voice. "Give me a table
knife."

Through the crack of the door he felt the inner bolt with the table
knife; whittled away with the blade the edges of the crack, and widened
it so that he could at last push the end of the knife through it, and
began gradually to scrape back the bolt. Only the grating of metal
against metal could be heard.

Finally Simeon threw the door wide open.

Jennka was hanging in the middle of the water-closet on a tape from her
corset, fastened to the lamphook. Her body, already motionless after an
unprolonged agony, was slowly swinging in the air, and describing
scarcely perceptible turns to the right and left around its vertical
axis. Her face was bluishly-purple, and the tip of the tongue was
thrust out between clenched and bared teeth. The lamp which had been
taken off was also here, sprawling on the floor.

Some one began to squeal hysterically, and all the girls, like a
stampeded herd, crowding and jostling each other in the narrow
corridor, vociferating and choking with hysterical sobbings, started in