m behind the skiff and went into
the town... Then we took friendly leave of each other and never met
again, although for half a year I searched in every hole and corner
for that kind Natasha, with whom I spent the autumn night just
described.

If she be already dead--and well for her if it were so--may she rest
in peace! And if she be alive ... still I say "Peace to her soul!" And
may the consciousness of her fall never enter her soul ... for that
would be a superfluous and fruitless suffering if life is to be
lived...

HER LOVER

BY MAXIM GORKY

An acquaintance of mine once told me the following story.

When I was a student at Moscow I happened to live alongside one of
those ladies whose repute is questionable. She was a Pole, and they
called her Teresa. She was a tallish, powerfully-built brunette, with
black, bushy eyebrows and a large coarse face as if carved out by a
hatchet--the bestial gleam of her dark eyes, her thick bass voice, her
cabman-like gait and her immense muscular vigour, worthy of a
fishwife, inspired me with horror. I lived on the top flight and her
garret was opposite to mine. I never left my door open when I knew her
to be at home. But this, after all, was a very rare occurrence.
Sometimes I chanced to meet her on the staircase or in the yard, and
she would smile upon me with a smile which seemed to me to be sly and
cynical. Occasionally, I saw her drunk, with bleary eyes, tousled
hair, and a particularly hideous grin. On such occasions she would
speak to me.

"How d'ye do, Mr. Student!" and her stupid laugh would still further
intensify my loathing of her. I should have liked to have changed my
quarters in order to have avoided such encounters and greetings; but
my little chamber was a nice one, and there was such a wide view from
the window, and it was always so quiet in the street below--so I
endured.

And one morning I was sprawling on my couch, trying to find some sort
of excuse for not attending my class, when the door opened, and the
bass voice of Teresa the loathsome resounded from my threshold:

"Good health to you, Mr. Student!"

"What do you want?" I said. I saw that her face was confused and
supplicatory... It was a very unusual sort of face for her.

"Sir! I want to beg a favour of you. Will you grant it me?"

I lay there silent, and thought to myself:

"Gracious!... Courage, my boy!"

"I want to send a letter home, that's what it is," she said; her voice