s
from fear of putting him out. I used to set my teeth till my jaws felt
absolutely locked. In the moments when Peter Ivanovitch interrupted his
dictation, and sometimes these intervals were very long--often twenty
minutes, no less, while he walked to and fro behind my back muttering
to himself--I felt I was dying by inches, I assure you. Perhaps if I had
let my teeth rattle Peter Ivanovitch might have noticed my distress, but
I don't think it would have had any practical effect. She's very miserly
in such matters."

The _dame de compagnie_ glanced up the staircase. The big cat had
finished the milk and was rubbing its whiskered cheek sinuously against
her skirt. She dived to snatch it up from the floor.

"Miserliness is rather a quality than otherwise, you know," she
continued, holding the cat in her folded arms. "With us it is misers who
can spare money for worthy objects--not the so-called generous natures.
But pray don't think I am a sybarite. My father was a clerk in the
Ministry of Finances with no position at all. You may guess by this that
our home was far from luxurious, though of course we did not actually
suffer from cold. I ran away from my parents, you know, directly I began
to think by myself. It is not very easy, such thinking. One has got to
be put in the way of it, awakened to the truth. I am indebted for my
salvation to an old apple-woman, who had her stall under the gateway
of the house we lived in. She had a kind wrinkled face, and the most
friendly voice imaginable. One day, casually, we began to talk about a
child, a ragged little girl we had seen begging from men in the streets
at dusk; and from one thing to another my eyes began to open gradually
to the horrors from which innocent people are made to suffer in
this world, only in order that governments might exist. After I once
understood the crime of the upper classes, I could not go on living with
my parents. Not a single charitable word was to be heard in our home
from year's end to year's end; there was nothing but the talk of vile
office intrigues, and of promotion and of salaries, and of courting the
favour of the chiefs. The mere idea of marrying one day such another man
as my father made me shudder. I don't mean that there was anyone wanting
to marry me. There was not the slightest prospect of anything of the
kind. But was it not sin enough to live on a Government salary while
half Russia was dying of hunger? The Ministry of Finances! Wha