adventure!"

"Give me rest!" answered Kranitski in a complaining voice. "I am
sick, the most wretched of men. Everything is past for me--I beg
you to look to the door, so that no one may enter; I am suffering
too much to let in impertinent people."

There were tears in his eyes, and his appearance was wretched. No
one was looking at him then, except his old servant, who was as
faithful as a dog, so he let the fetters of artificial youth and
elegance drop from him. His shoulders were bent, his cheeks
pendant, above his brows were red spots and thick wrinkles. He
vanished then beyond the half-closed door of his bedroom, and
widow Clemens went back to the work interrupted by his coming. In
the middle of the drawing-room, on an open card-table, lay,
spread out, a dressing gown of Turkish stuff. That gown,
beautiful on a time, was then faded; moreover, its lining was
torn. Widow Clemens while repairing that lining and patching it
had been interrupted by Kranitski's return; and now, wearing
great steel-rimmed glasses, and with a brass thimble on her
middle finger, she sat down again. She examined a rent through
which wadding peeped out on the world, cautiously. But in spite
of her attention fixed on the work she whispered, or rather
talked on in a low and monotonous mutter:

"'Look to the door, let no one in!' As if anyone ever comes here.
Long ago, comrades and various protectors used to come; they came
often at first, afterward very seldom; but now it is perhaps two
years since even a dog has looked in here. He could not bear
impertinent people. Oh, yes! they come here, many of them,
princes, counts, various rich persons. Oh, yes! while he was a
novelty and brilliant they amused themselves with him as they
would with a shining button, but when the button was rubbed and
dull they threw it into a corner. The relations, the friends, the
companions! Arabian adventure! Oh, this society!"

She was silent a while, put a piece of carefully fitted material
on the rent, raised her hand a number of times with the long
thread, and again muttered:

"But is that society? It is sin, not society! Roll in sin, like
the devil in pitch, and then scream that it burns! Oi, Oi!"

Silence reigned in the room; only the clock, that unavoidable
dweller in all houses, that comrade of all people, ticked
monotonously on the shelf, beneath the mirror, among the
porcelain figures. Widow Clemens, while sewing, industriously,
muttered on. Her un