honestly acquired is
not anything to be ashamed of! It's nothing but an ordinary smallpox
which all people who are worth anything in this world have to pass
through. Ho! ho! I have been playing blindman's buff with troubles
since many a year! Well, I shall end what I am saying in a gallop.
Let us do this . . ."

He turned around, took from his pocketbook thirty rubles, that is,
all the money that had been sent him for his journey, placed it
under Janina's pillow and returned to his former seat.

"'Now we are agreed, are we not, my cousin . . .' said Louis XI
after beheading the Duke of Anjou. I will accept no appeal and if
you dare to . . ."

He grasped his hat and extending his hand, said softly: "Good-bye,
Miss Janina."

With a desperate motion, Janina hastily barred the door with her
body.

"No, no! Do not humiliate me! I am unfortunate enough as it is," she
whispered, firmly holding his hand.

"There you have a woman's philosophy! May the deuce take me, but
that which I did is as natural as the fact that I will some day blow
out my brains and that you will become a great actress!"

Janina began to expostulate with him, and finally to urge him to
take back his money, saying that she did not need it, that she would
not accept it, and showing a deep aversion to being helped.

Glogowski became gloomy and said roughly: "What! May the deuce take
me, but of the two of us I certainly am not the fool! But no! I
refuse to get provoked about it. I shall sit down calmly and talk it
over with you seriously. I don't want you to get angry at me over
such an empty thing as money. You don't want to take it, although
you need it, and why? Because a false shame deters you, because you
have been taught that such simple human things as helping one
another lowers one's pride. Such conceptions are already becoming
putrid. To the museum with them! Those are foolish and evil
prejudices. May the deuce take me, but it requires a European brain
and hysterical subtlety to hesitate to accept money from a human
being like yourself when you are in need. Why and to what purpose do
you think the human herd unites itself into some form of society? Is
it mutually to devour and rob one another or mutually to help one
another? I know you will tell me that it is otherwise, but I answer
you that that is precisely why we have so much evil in this world.
And once we recognize a thing as evil we ought to shun it. Man ought
to do good. That is his