musical box and
the twisting and turning of the insolent little wooden head. She came
round to the front of the counter with gleaming eyes and clenched fists.

"Stop that thing!" she cried, "Stop it, or it will drive me mad."

Fischelowitz still smiled, and the doll continued to turn round and round
to the tune, while the Count looked out through the open door. Suddenly
there was a quick shadow on the brightly lighted floor of the shop,
followed instantly by a crash, and then with a miserable attempt to finish
its tune the little instrument gave a resounding groan and was silent.
Akulina had struck the Gigerl such a blow as had sent it flying, pedestal
and all, past her husband's head into a dark corner behind the counter.
Fischelowitz reddened with anger, and Akulina stood ready to take to
flight, glad that the broad counter was between herself and her husband.
Her fury had spent itself in one blow and she would have given anything to
set the doll up in its place again unharmed. She realised at the same
instant that she had probably destroyed any intrinsic value which the
thing had possessed, and her face fell wofully. The Count turned slowly
where he stood and looked at the couple.

"Are you going to fight each other?" he inquired in unusually bland tones.

At the sound of his voice the Russian woman's anger rose again, glad to
find some new object upon which to expend itself and on which to exercise
vengeance for the catastrophe its last expression had brought about. She
turned savagely upon the Count and shook her plump brown fists in his
face.

"It is all your fault!" she exclaimed. "What business have you to come
between husband and wife with your friends and your cursed dolls, the
fiend take them, and you! Is it for this that Christian Gregorovitch and I
have lived together in harmony these ten years and more? Is it for this
that we have lived without a word of anger--"

"What did you say?" asked Fischelowitz, with an angry laugh. But she did
not heed him.

"Without a word of anger between us, these many years?" she continued. "Is
it for this? To have our peace destroyed by a couple of Wiener Gigerls, a
doll and a sham count? But it is over now! It is over, I tell you--go, get
yourself out of the shop, out of my sight, into the street where you
belong! For honest folks to be harbouring such a fellow as you are, and
not you only, but your friends and your rag and your tag! Fie! If you stay
here long we shal