nd be done with it. It's ruining me. Heavy losses every day!"
He wrung his hands, and continued, addressing Olenka: "What a life,
Olga Semyonovna! It's enough to make a man weep. He works, he does his
best, his very best, he tortures himself, he passes sleepless nights,
he thinks and thinks and thinks how to do everything just right. And
what's the result? He gives the public the best operetta, the very
best pantomime, excellent artists. But do they want it? Have they the
least appreciation of it? The public is rude. The public is a great
boor. The public wants a circus, a lot of nonsense, a lot of stuff.
And there's the weather. Look! Rain almost every evening. It began to
rain on the tenth of May, and it's kept it up through the whole of
June. It's simply awful. I can't get any audiences, and don't I have
to pay rent? Don't I have to pay the actors?"

The next day towards evening the clouds gathered again, and Kukin said
with an hysterical laugh:

"Oh, I don't care. Let it do its worst. Let it drown the whole
theatre, and me, too. All right, no luck for me in this world or the
next. Let the actors bring suit against me and drag me to court.
What's the court? Why not Siberia at hard labour, or even the
scaffold? Ha, ha, ha!"

It was the same on the third day.

Olenka listened to Kukin seriously, in silence. Sometimes tears would
rise to her eyes. At last Kukin's misfortune touched her. She fell in
love with him. He was short, gaunt, with a yellow face, and curly hair
combed back from his forehead, and a thin tenor voice. His features
puckered all up when he spoke. Despair was ever inscribed on his face.
And yet he awakened in Olenka a sincere, deep feeling.

She was always loving somebody. She couldn't get on without loving
somebody. She had loved her sick father, who sat the whole time in his
armchair in a darkened room, breathing heavily. She had loved her
aunt, who came from Brianska once or twice a year to visit them. And
before that, when a pupil at the progymnasium, she had loved her
French teacher. She was a quiet, kind-hearted, compassionate girl,
with a soft gentle way about her. And she made a very healthy,
wholesome impression. Looking at her full, rosy cheeks, at her soft
white neck with the black mole, and at the good naive smile that
always played on her face when something pleasant was said, the men
would think, "Not so bad," and would smile too; and the lady visitors,
in the middle of the conversa