But that servant! Why will she stand there?"

Finkel suddenly snorted like a steam-engine right into her mouth,
and said:

"I don't advise you to have it stopped. That tooth will never be
worth keeping anyhow."

After probing the tooth a little more and soiling Vanda's lips and
gums with his tobacco-stained fingers, he held his breath again,
and put something cold into her mouth. Vanda suddenly felt a sharp
pain, cried out, and clutched at Finkel's hand.

"It's all right, it's all right," he muttered; "don't you be
frightened! That tooth would have been no use to you, anyway . . .
you must be brave. . ."

And his tobacco-stained fingers, smeared with blood, held up the
tooth to her eyes, while the maid approached and put a basin to her
mouth.

"You wash out your mouth with cold water when you get home, and
that will stop the bleeding," said Finkel.

He stood before her with the air of a man expecting her to go,
waiting to be left in peace.

"Good-day," she said, turning towards the door.

"Hm! . . . and how about my fee?" enquired Finkel, in a jesting
tone.

"Oh, yes!" Vanda remembered, blushing, and she handed the Jew the
rouble that had been given her for her ring.

When she got out into the street she felt more overwhelmed with
shame than before, but now it was not her poverty she was ashamed
of. She was unconscious now of not having a big hat and a fashionable
jacket. She walked along the street, spitting blood, and brooding
on her life, her ugly, wretched life, and the insults she had
endured, and would have to endure to-morrow, and next week, and all
her life, up to the very day of her death.

"Oh! how awful it is! My God, how fearful!"

Next day, however, she was back at the "Renaissance," and dancing
there. She had on an enormous new red hat, a new fashionable jacket,
and bronze shoes. And she was taken out to supper by a young merchant
up from Kazan.

A TRIVIAL INCIDENT

IT was a sunny August midday as, in company with a Russian prince
who had come down in the world, I drove into the immense so-called
Shabelsky pine-forest where we were intending to look for woodcocks.
In virtue of the part he plays in this story my poor prince deserves
a detailed description. He was a tall, dark man, still youngish,
though already somewhat battered by life; with long moustaches like
a police captain's; with prominent black eyes, and with the manners
of a retired army man. He was a man of Oriental type,