far and wide. Life is good! ... Look: there's the sun, the
blue sky ... How pure the air is ... Cobwebs are floating--it's Indian
summer ... How good it is in this world! ... Only we alone--we
wenches--are wayside rubbish."

The girls started off on their journey. But suddenly from somewhere on
the side, from behind a monument, a tall sturdy student detached
himself. He caught up with Liubka and softly touched her sleeve. She
turned around and beheld Soloviev. Her face instantaneously turned
pale, her eyes opened wide and her lips began to tremble.

"Go away!" she said quietly, with infinite hatred.

"Liuba ... Liubochka ..." Soloviev began to mumble. "I searched ...
searched for you ... I ... Honest to God, I'm not like that one ...
like Lichonin ... I'm in earnest ... even right now, even to-day.

"Go away!" still more quietly pronounced Liubka.

"I'm serious ... I'm serious ... I'm not trifling, I want to marry..."

"Oh, you creature!" suddenly squealed out Liubka, and quickly, hard,
peasant-like, hit Soloviev on the cheek with her palm.

Soloviev stood a little while, slightly swaying. His eyes were like
those of a martyr ... The mouth half-open, with mournful creases at the
sides.

"Go away! Go away! I can't bear to look at all of you!" Liubka was
screaming with rage. "Hangmen, swine!"

Soloviev unexpectedly covered his face with his palms and went back,
without knowing his way, with uncertain steps, like one drunk.

CHAPTER IX.

And in reality, the words of Tamara proved to be prophetic: since the
funeral of Jennie not more than two weeks had passed, but during this
brief space of time so many events burst over the house of Emma
Edwardovna as do not befall sometimes even in half a decade.

On the very next day they had to send off to a charitable
institution--into a lunatic asylum--the unfortunate Pashka, who had
fallen completely into feeble-mindedness. The doctors said that there
was no hope of her ever improving. And in reality, as they had placed
her in the hospital on the floor, upon a straw mattress, so did she
remain upon it without getting up from it to her very death; submerging
more and more into the black, bottomless abyss of quiet
feeble-mindedness; but she died only half a year later, from bed-sores
and infection of the blood.

The next turn was Tamara's.

For about half a month she fulfilled the duties of a housekeeper, was
all the time unusually active, energetic; and someho