--earns so
much, that on busy gala days she is not brought out to the more drab
guests at all, or else refused them under the pretext of Pasha's
illness, because the steady, paying guests are offended if they are
told that the girl they know is busy with another. And of such steady
guests Pasha has a multitude; many are with perfect sincerity, even
though bestially, in love with her, and even not so long ago two,
almost at the same time, offered to set her up: a Georgian--a clerk in
a store of Cakhetine wines, and some railroad agent, a very proud and
very poor nobleman, with shirt cuffs the colour of a cabbage rose, and
with an eye which had been replaced by a black circle on an elastic.
Pasha, passive in everything save her impersonal sensuality, would go
with anybody who might call her, but the administration of the house
vigilantly guards its interests in her. A near insanity already flits
over her lovely face, in her half-closed eyes, always smiling with some
heady, blissful, meek, bashful and unseemly smile, in her languorous,
softened, moist lips, which she is constantly licking; in her short,
quiet laugh--the laugh of an idiot. Yet at the same time she--this
veritable victim of the social temperament--in everyday life is very
good-natured, yielding, entirely uncovetous and is very much ashamed of
her inordinate passion. Toward her mates she is tender, likes very much
to kiss and embrace them and sleep in the same bed with them, but still
everybody has a little aversion for her, it would seem.

"Mannechka, sweetie, dearie," says Pasha lightly touching Manya's hand
with emotion, "tell my fortune, my precious little child."

"We-ell," Manya pouts her lips just like a child, "let's play a little
more."

"Mannechka, my little beauty, you little good-looker, my precious, my
own, my dear..."

Manya gives in and lays out the pack on her knees. A suit of hearts
comes out, a small monetary interest and a meeting in the suit of
spades with a large company in the king of clubs.

Pasha claps her hands joyously:

"Ah, it's my Levanchik! Well, yes, he promised to come to-day. Of
course, it's Levanchik."

"That's your Georgian!"

"Yes, yes, my little Georgian. Oh, how nice he is. I'd just love never
to let him go away from me. Do you know what he told me the last time?
'If you'll go on living in a sporting house, then I'll make both you
dead, and make me dead.' And he flashed his eyes at me so!"

Jennie, who had sto