ve drunk all the tea they
want, she has to heat it five times. After tea Varka stands for a
whole hour on the same spot, looking at the visitors, and waiting
for orders.

"Varka, run and buy three bottles of beer!"

She starts off, and tries to run as quickly as she can, to drive
away sleep.

"Varka, fetch some vodka! Varka, where's the corkscrew? Varka, clean
a herring!"

But now, at last, the visitors have gone; the lights are put out,
the master and mistress go to bed.

"Varka, rock the baby!" she hears the last order.

The cricket churrs in the stove; the green patch on the ceiling and
the shadows from the trousers and the baby-clothes force themselves
on Varka's half-opened eyes again, wink at her and cloud her mind.

"Hush-a-bye, my baby wee," she murmurs, "and I will sing a song to
thee."

And the baby screams, and is worn out with screaming. Again Varka
sees the muddy high road, the people with wallets, her mother
Pelageya, her father Yefim. She understands everything, she recognises
everyone, but through her half sleep she cannot understand the force
which binds her, hand and foot, weighs upon her, and prevents her
from living. She looks round, searches for that force that she may
escape from it, but she cannot find it. At last, tired to death,
she does her very utmost, strains her eyes, looks up at the flickering
green patch, and listening to the screaming, finds the foe who will
not let her live.

That foe is the baby.

She laughs. It seems strange to her that she has failed to grasp
such a simple thing before. The green patch, the shadows, and the
cricket seem to laugh and wonder too.

The hallucination takes possession of Varka. She gets up from her
stool, and with a broad smile on her face and wide unblinking eyes,
she walks up and down the room. She feels pleased and tickled at
the thought that she will be rid directly of the baby that binds
her hand and foot. . . . Kill the baby and then sleep, sleep,
sleep. . . .

Laughing and winking and shaking her fingers at the green patch,
Varka steals up to the cradle and bends over the baby. When she has
strangled him, she quickly lies down on the floor, laughs with
delight that she can sleep, and in a minute is sleeping as sound
as the dead.

CHILDREN

PAPA and mamma and Aunt Nadya are not at home. They have gone to a
christening party at the house of that old officer who rides on a
little grey horse. While waiting for them to come home,