ke it or leave it."

Vjera looked at Schmidt anxiously as though to ask his opinion.

"They will not give more," he said, in Russian.

The girl took the money and the flimsy tickets and they went out into the
street. Vjera hesitated as to the direction she should take, and Schmidt
looked to her as though awaiting her orders.

"Twenty-eight and a half and six and a half are thirty-five," she said,
thoughtfully. "And we have nothing more to give, but this. I must sell it,
Herr Schmidt."

"Well, what is it?" he asked, glad to know the secret at last.

"It is my mother's hair. She cut it off herself when she knew she was
dying and she told me to sell it if ever I needed a little money."

The girl's voice trembled violently, and she turned her head away. Schmidt
was silent and very grave. Then Vjera began to move on again, clutching
the precious thing to her bosom and drawing her shawl over it.

"The best man for this lives in the Maffei Strasse," said Schmidt after a
few minutes.

"Show me the way." Vjera turned as he directed. At that moment she would
have lost herself in the familiar streets, had he not been there to guide
her.

The hairdresser's shop was brilliantly lighted, and as good fortune would
have it, there were no customers within. With an entreating glance which
he obeyed, Vjera made Schmidt wait outside.

"Please do not look!" she whispered. "I can bear it better alone." The
good fellow nodded and began to walk up and down.

As Vjera entered the shop, the chief barber in command waltzed forward, as
hairdressers always seem to waltz. At the sight of the poor girl, however,
he assumed a stern appearance which, to tell the truth, was out of
character with his style of beauty. His rich brown locks were curled and
anointed in a way that might have aroused envy in the heart of an Assyrian
dandy in the palmy days of Sardanapalus.

"Do you buy hair?" asked Vjera, timidly offering her limp parcel.

"Oh, certainly, sometimes," answered the barber. The youth in
attendance--the barber tadpole of the hairdresser frog--abandoned the
cleansing of a comb and came forward with a leer, in the hope that Vjera
might turn out to be pretty on a closer inspection. In this he was
disappointed.

The man took the parcel and laid it on one of the narrow marble tables
placed before a mirror in a richly gilt frame. He pushed aside the blue
glass powder-box, the vial of brilliantine and the brushes. Vjera untied
the bit o