's, which allows him to continue gambling with his guests.
His moist, soft fingers tremble as he holds the cards, and he infuriates
every one by his erratic bidding.

A guest slams his hand down on the table and calls Tchedesky a name.

Tchedesky's whitish, livid cheeks shake, and his lips open uncertainly.
But he must be discreet. He does not dare offend his guests, for he
wants to play with them again, and he must not let his wife know that he
is gambling. So he begs pardon in a whisper.

There is a pretty maid in the _pension_ called Antosha. She has light,
frowzy hair, and a round, full figure. The other maids are jealous of
her. When she dresses up to wait on the table at dinner at three
o'clock, she wears a cheap pink silk waist and long gilt earrings, and
two or three little rings with blue and red stones. Her wages are
fifteen roubles a month. One day I saw Tchedesky kissing her on the
neck. Very white and shaken, he came to me afterwards and begged me to
say nothing about it to any one.

He has terrible scenes with his wife, who is hysterical and grows rigid.
He stays up with her all night and uses it as an excuse to get a
morphine injection for his own nervousness next day. He is quite
courteous and frankly loves women and food and money. I feel as though,
if I poked my finger into him, he would burst like a rotten potato.

There is the Morowski family from near Cracow. Pan Morowski's brother is
in the Austrian Chamber of Deputies, but he and his family are Russian
subjects. They have been here in Kiev for some months now. For seven
days he and his eldest daughter remained while the Russians and
Austrians fought for their farm. The rest of the family had been sent
into Kiev, but these two had hoped that by staying they might preserve
their farm from being plundered and burned. The Austrians had sacked
their neighbors' houses. The Austrian officers' wives had followed in
the wake of the army and had taken the linen from the closets, and the
ball-gowns, and the silver--even the pictures off the walls.

Lovely weather it was. The girl said you would hardly realize there was
war, sometimes. The gardener would go out and straighten the trampled
flowers. The carts of wounded would pass regularly, stopping
occasionally for water or tea. They would say the fighting had passed
on. And then, suddenly, the crack and boom would approach again, shaking
the house walls--the little uncurling puffs of smoke against the b