ooked at her with a face of suffering.

"We have been your ruin, Sonia. Polenka, Lida, Kolya, come here! Well,
here they are, Sonia, take them all! I hand them over to you, I've had
enough! The ball is over." (Cough!) "Lay me down, let me die in peace."

They laid her back on the pillow.

"What, the priest? I don't want him. You haven't got a rouble to spare.
I have no sins. God must forgive me without that. He knows how I have
suffered.... And if He won't forgive me, I don't care!"

She sank more and more into uneasy delirium. At times she shuddered,
turned her eyes from side to side, recognised everyone for a minute,
but at once sank into delirium again. Her breathing was hoarse and
difficult, there was a sort of rattle in her throat.

"I said to him, your excellency," she ejaculated, gasping after each
word. "That Amalia Ludwigovna, ah! Lida, Kolya, hands on your hips,
make haste! _Glissez, glissez! pas de basque!_ Tap with your heels, be a
graceful child!

"_Du hast Diamanten und Perlen_

"What next? That's the thing to sing.

"_Du hast die schonsten Augen Madchen, was willst du mehr?_

"What an idea! _Was willst du mehr?_ What things the fool invents! Ah,
yes!

"In the heat of midday in the vale of Dagestan.

"Ah, how I loved it! I loved that song to distraction, Polenka! Your
father, you know, used to sing it when we were engaged.... Oh those
days! Oh that's the thing for us to sing! How does it go? I've
forgotten. Remind me! How was it?"

She was violently excited and tried to sit up. At last, in a horribly
hoarse, broken voice, she began, shrieking and gasping at every word,
with a look of growing terror.

"In the heat of midday!... in the vale!... of Dagestan!... With lead in
my breast!..."

"Your excellency!" she wailed suddenly with a heart-rending scream and
a flood of tears, "protect the orphans! You have been their father's
guest... one may say aristocratic...." She started, regaining
consciousness, and gazed at all with a sort of terror, but at once
recognised Sonia.

"Sonia, Sonia!" she articulated softly and caressingly, as though
surprised to find her there. "Sonia darling, are you here, too?"

They lifted her up again.

"Enough! It's over! Farewell, poor thing! I am done for! I am broken!"
she cried with vindictive despair, and her head fell heavily back on the
pillow.

She sank into unconsciousness again, but this time it did not last long.
Her pale, yellow, wasted face droppe