you, Nikolay Timofeitch. Come to-day!"

"Talk? What about? There's nothing to talk about."

"You are the only person who . . . cares about me, and I've no one
to talk to but you."

"These are not reed or steel, but real whalebone. . . . What is
there for us to talk about? It's no use talking. . . . You are going
for a walk with him to-day, I suppose?"

"Yes; I . . . I am."

"Then what's the use of talking? Talk won't help. . . . You are in
love, aren't you?"

"Yes . . ." Polinka whispers hesitatingly, and big tears gush from
her eyes.

"What is there to say?" mutters Nikolay Timofeitch, shrugging his
shoulders nervously and turning pale. "There's no need of talk. . . .
Wipe your eyes, that's all. I . . . I ask for nothing."

At that moment a tall, lanky shopman comes up to the pyramid of
boxes, and says to his customer:

"Let me show you some good elastic garters that do not impede the
circulation, certified by medical authority . . ."

Nikolay Timofeitch screens Polinka, and, trying to conceal her
emotion and his own, wrinkles his face into a smile and says aloud:

"There are two kinds of lace, madam: cotton and silk! Oriental,
English, Valenciennes, crochet, torchon, are cotton. And rococo,
soutache, Cambray, are silk. . . . For God's sake, wipe your eyes!
They're coming this way!"

And seeing that her tears are still gushing he goes on louder than
ever:

"Spanish, Rococo, soutache, Cambray . . . stockings, thread, cotton,
silk . . ."

ANYUTA

IN the cheapest room of a big block of furnished apartments Stepan
Klotchkov, a medical student in his third year, was walking to and
fro, zealously conning his anatomy. His mouth was dry and his
forehead perspiring from the unceasing effort to learn it by heart.

In the window, covered by patterns of frost, sat on a stool the
girl who shared his room--Anyuta, a thin little brunette of
five-and-twenty, very pale with mild grey eyes. Sitting with bent
back she was busy embroidering with red thread the collar of a man's
shirt. She was working against time. . . . The clock in the passage
struck two drowsily, yet the little room had not been put to rights
for the morning. Crumpled bed-clothes, pillows thrown about, books,
clothes, a big filthy slop-pail filled with soap-suds in which
cigarette ends were swimming, and the litter on the floor--all
seemed as though purposely jumbled together in one confusion. . . .

"The right lung consists of three parts . .