not chum with any one, does not initiate any
one into her past life. But in her case there must have been many more
adventures besides having been a nun: there is something mysterious,
taciturn and criminal in her unhurried speech, in the evasive glance of
her deep and dark-gold eyes from under the long, lowered eyelashes, in
her manners, her sly smiles and intonations of a modest but wanton
would-be saint. There was one occurrence when the girls, with well-nigh
reverent awe, heard that Tamara could talk fluently in French and
German. She has within her some sort of an inner, restrained power.
Notwithstanding her outward meekness and complaisance, all in the
establishment treat her with respect and circumspection--the
proprietress, and her mates, and both housekeepers, and even the
doorkeeper, that veritable sultan of the house of ill-fame, that
general terror and hero.

"I've covered it," says Zoe and turns over the trump which had been
lying under the pack, wrong side up. "I'm going with forty, going with
an ace of spades--a ten-spot, Mannechka, if you please. I'm through.
Fifty-seven, eleven, sixty-eight. How much have you?"

"Thirty," says Manka in an offended tone, pouting her lips; "oh, it's
all very well for you--you remember all the plays. Deal ... Well,
what's after that, Tamarochka?" she turns to her friend. "You talk
on--I'm listening."

Zoe shuffles the old, black, greasy cards, allows Manya to cut, then
deals, having first spat upon her fingers.

Tamara in the meanwhile is narrating to Manya in a quiet voice, without
dropping her sewing.

"We embroidered with gold, in flat embroidery--altar covers, palls,
bishops' vestments... With little grasses, with flowers, little
crosses. In winter, you'd be sitting near a casement; the panes are
small, with gratings, there isn't much light, it smells of lamp oil,
incense, cypress; you mustn't talk--the mother superior was strict.
Some one from weariness would begin droning a pre-Lenten first verse of
a hymn ... 'When I consider thy heavens ...' We sang fine, beautifully,
and it was such a quiet life, and the smell was so fine; you could see
the flaky snow out the windows--well, now, just like in a dream..."

Jennie puts the tattered novel down on her stomach, throws the
cigarette over Zoe's head, and says mockingly:

"We know all about your quiet life. You chucked the infants into
toilets. The Evil One is always snooping around your holy places."

"I call fo