ses.

Shortly afterwards I set off, too. The sun was already rising, and
the mist of the previous day clung timidly to the bushes and the
hillocks. On the box of the carriage was sitting Forty Martyrs; he
had already succeeded in getting drunk and was muttering tipsy
nonsense.

"I am a free man," he shouted to the horses. "Ah, my honeys, I am
a nobleman in my own right, if you care to know!"

The terror of Dmitri Petrovitch, the thought of whom I could not
get out of my head, infected me. I thought of what had happened and
could make nothing of it. I looked at the rooks, and it seemed so
strange and terrible that they were flying.

"Why have I done this?" I kept asking myself in bewilderment and
despair. "Why has it turned out like this and not differently? To
whom and for what was it necessary that she should love me in
earnest, and that he should come into my room to fetch his cap?
What had a cap to do with it?"

I set off for Petersburg that day, and I have not seen Dmitri
Petrovitch nor his wife since. I am told that they are still living
together.

A WOMAN'S KINGDOM

I

Christmas Eve

HERE was a thick roll of notes. It came from the bailiff at the
forest villa; he wrote that he was sending fifteen hundred roubles,
which he had been awarded as damages, having won an appeal. Anna
Akimovna disliked and feared such words as "awarded damages" and
"won the suit." She knew that it was impossible to do without the
law, but for some reason, whenever Nazaritch, the manager of the
factory, or the bailiff of her villa in the country, both of whom
frequently went to law, used to win lawsuits of some sort for her
benefit, she always felt uneasy and, as it were, ashamed. On this
occasion, too, she felt uneasy and awkward, and wanted to put that
fifteen hundred roubles further away that it might be out of her
sight.

She thought with vexation that other girls of her age--she was
in her twenty-sixth year--were now busy looking after their
households, were weary and would sleep sound, and would wake up
tomorrow morning in holiday mood; many of them had long been married
and had children. Only she, for some reason, was compelled to sit
like an old woman over these letters, to make notes upon them, to
write answers, then to do nothing the whole evening till midnight,
but wait till she was sleepy; and tomorrow they would all day long
be coming with Christmas greetings and asking for favours; and the
day after tomorro