p the scissors!"

Makar Kuzmitch takes up the scissors, stares vacantly at them for
a minute, then drops them again on the table. His hands are shaking.

"I can't," he says. "I can't do it just now. I haven't the strength!
I am a miserable man! And she is miserable! We loved each other,
we had given each other our promise and we have been separated by
unkind people without any pity. Go away, Erast Ivanitch! I can't
bear the sight of you."

"So I'll come to-morrow, Makarushka. You will finish me to-morrow."

"Right."

"You calm yourself and I will come to you early in the morning."

Erast Ivanitch has half his head shaven to the skin and looks like
a convict. It is awkward to be left with a head like that, but there
is no help for it. He wraps his head in the shawl and walks out of
the barber's shop. Left alone, Makar Kuzmitch sits down and goes
on quietly weeping.

Early next morning Erast Ivanitch comes again.

"What do you want?" Makar Kuzmitch asks him coldly.

"Finish cutting my hair, Makarushka. There is half the head left
to do."

"Kindly give me the money in advance. I won't cut it for nothing."

Without saying a word Erast Ivanitch goes out, and to this day his
hair is long on one side of the head and short on the other. He
regards it as extravagance to pay for having his hair cut and is
waiting for the hair to grow of itself on the shaven side.

He danced at the wedding in that condition.

AN INADVERTENCE

PYOTR PETROVITCH STRIZHIN, the nephew of Madame Ivanov, the colonel's
widow--the man whose new goloshes were stolen last year,--came
home from a christening party at two o'clock in the morning. To
avoid waking the household he took off his things in the lobby,
made his way on tiptoe to his room, holding his breath, and began
getting ready for bed without lighting a candle.

Strizhin leads a sober and regular life. He has a sanctimonious
expression of face, he reads nothing but religious and edifying
books, but at the christening party, in his delight that Lyubov
Spiridonovna had passed through her confinement successfully, he
had permitted himself to drink four glasses of vodka and a glass
of wine, the taste of which suggested something midway between
vinegar and castor oil. Spirituous liquors are like sea-water and
glory: the more you imbibe of them the greater your thirst. And now
as he undressed, Strizhin was aware of an overwhelming craving for
drink.

"I believe Dashenka has some