years, but a lifetime," said Maslova, and suddenly her face
became sullen and a wrinkle formed between her eyebrows.

"Yours was an easy life, wasn't it?"

"Yes, easy," Maslova repeated, closing her eyes and shaking her head.
"Worse than penal servitude."

"Why so?"

"Because. From eight in the evening to four in the morning--every day
the same."

"Then why don't they get out?"

"They like to, but cannot. But what is the use of talking!" cried
Maslova, and she sprang to her feet, threw the photograph into the
drawer of the table, and suppressing her angry tears, ran into the
corridor, slamming the door. Looking on the photograph she imagined
herself as she had been at the time the photograph was made, and
dreamed how happy she had been and might still be with him. The words
of her companion reminded her what she was now--reminded her of all
the horror of that life which she then felt but confusedly, and would
not allow herself to admit. Only now she vividly recalled all those
terrible nights, particularly one Shrovetide night. She recalled how
she, in a low-cut, wine-bespattered, red silk dress, with a red bow in
her dishevelled hair, weak, jaded and tipsy, after dancing attendance
upon the guest, had seated herself, at two in the morning, near the
thin, bony, pimpled girl-pianist and complained of her hard life. The
girl said that her life was also disagreeable to her, and that she
wished to change her occupation. Afterward their friend Clara joined
them, and all three suddenly decided to change their life. They were
about to leave the place when the drunken guests became noisy, the
fiddler struck up a lively song of the first figure of a Russian
quadrille, the pianist began to thump in unison, a little drunken man
in a white necktie and dress coat caught her up. Another man, stout
and bearded, and also in a dress coat, seized Clara, and for a long
time they whirled, danced, shouted and drank. Thus a year passed, a
second and a third. How could she help changing! And the cause of it
all was he. And suddenly her former wrath against him rose in her; and
she felt like chiding and reproving him. She was sorry that she had
missed the opportunity of telling him again that she knew him, and
would not yield to him; that she would not allow him to take advantage
of her spiritually as he had done corporeally; that she would not
allow him to make her the subject of his magnanimity. And in order to
deaden the painful fee