, nuts, rakkat loukoum (Turkish Delight), dill-pickles and
molasses candy, and had through this spoiled their appetites. Only Nina
alone--a small, pug-nosed, snuffling country girl, seduced only two
months ago by a travelling salesman, and (also by him) sold into a
brothel--eats for four. The inordinate, provident appetite of a woman
of the common people has not yet disappeared in her.

Jennie, who has only picked fastidiously at her cutlet and eaten half
her cream roll, speaks to her in a tone of hypocritical solicitude:

"Really, Pheclusha, you might just as well eat my cutlet, too. Eat, my
dear, eat; don't be bashful--you ought to be gaining in health. But do
you know what I'll tell you, ladies?" she turns to her mates, "Why, our
Pheclusha has a tape-worm, and when a person has a tape-worm, he always
eats for two: half for himself, half for the worm."

Nina sniffs angrily and answers in a bass which comes as a surprise
from one of her stature, and through her nose:

"There are no tape-worms in me. It's you that has the tape-worms,
that's why you are so skinny."

And she imperturbably continues to eat, and after dinner feels herself
sleepy, like a boa constrictor, eructs loudly, drinks water, hiccups,
and, by stealth, if no one sees her, makes the sign of the cross over
her mouth, through an old habit.

But already the ringing voice of Zociya can be heard through the
corridors and rooms:

"Get dressed, ladies, get dressed. There's no use in sitting
around...To work..."

After a few minutes in all the rooms of the establishment there are
smells of singed hair, boric-thymol soap, cheap eau-de-cologne. The
girls are dressing for the evening.

CHAPTER IV.

The late twilight came on, and after it the warm, dark night, but for
long, until very midnight, did the deep crimson glow of the sky still
smoulder. Simeon, the porter of the establishment, has lit all the
lamps along the walls of the drawing room, and the lustre, as well as
the red lantern over the stoop. Simeon was a spare, stocky, taciturn
and harsh man, with straight, broad shoulders, dark-haired,
pock-marked, with little bald spots on his eye-brows and moustaches
from small-pox, and with black, dull, insolent eyes. By day he was free
and slept, while at night he sat without absenting himself in the front
hall under the reflector, in order to help the guests with their coats
and to be ready in case of any disorder.

The pianist came--a tall, e