arette.

"How are you, my dear... my dear... I am so sorry. I always forget your
Christian name and your father's name."

Mashurina shrugged her shoulders.

"There is no need for you to know it. I think you know my surname. What
more do you want? And why do you always keep on asking how I am? You see
that I am still in the land of the living!"

"Of course!" Paklin exclaimed, his face twitching nervously. "If you had
been elsewhere, your humble servant would not have had the pleasure of
seeing you here, and of talking to you! My curiosity is due to a bad,
old-fashioned habit. But with regard to your name, it is awkward,
somehow, simply to say Mashurina. I know that even in letters you only
sign yourself Bonaparte! I beg pardon, Mashurina, but in conversation,
however--"

"And who asks you to talk to me, pray?"

Paklin gave a nervous, gulpy laugh.

"Well, never mind, my dear. Give me your hand. Don't be cross. I know
you mean well, and so do I... Well?"

Paklin extended his hand, Mashurina looked at him severely and extended
her own.

"If you really want to know my name," she said with the same expression
of severity on her face, "I am called Fiekla."

"And I, Pemien," Ostrodumov added in his bass voice.

"How very instructive! Then tell me, Oh Fiekla! and you, Oh Pemien! why
you are so unfriendly, so persistently unfriendly to me when I--"

"Mashurina thinks," Ostrodumov interrupted him, "and not only Mashurina,
that you are not to be depended upon, because you always laugh at
everything."

Paklin turned round on his heels.

"That is the usual mistake people make about me, my dear Pemien! In the
first place, I am not always laughing, and even if I were, that is no
reason why you should not trust me. In the second, I have been flattered
with your confidence on more than one occasion before now, a convincing
proof of my trustworthiness. I am an honest man, my dear Pemien."

Ostrodumov muttered something between his teeth, but Paklin continued
without the slightest trace of a smile on his face.

"No, I am not always laughing! I am not at all a cheerful person. You
have only to look at me!"

Ostrodumov looked at him. And really, when Paklin was not laughing, when
he was silent, his face assumed a dejected, almost scared expression;
it became funny and rather sarcastic only when he opened his lips.
Ostrodumov did not say anything, however, and Paklin turned to Mashurina
again.

"Well? And how are your