."

"My cousin charges me to ask you a favour," the lieutenant went on,
clinking his spurs once more and sitting down. "The fact is, your
late father made a purchase of oats from my cousin last winter, and
a small sum was left owing. The payment only becomes due next week,
but my cousin begs you most particularly to pay him--if possible,
to-day."

As the lieutenant talked, he stole side-glances about him.

"Surely I'm not in her bedroom?" he thought.

In one corner of the room, where the foliage was thickest and
tallest, under a pink awning like a funeral canopy, stood a bed not
yet made, with the bedclothes still in disorder. Close by on two
arm-chairs lay heaps of crumpled feminine garments. Petticoats and
sleeves with rumpled lace and flounces were trailing on the carpet,
on which here and there lay bits of white tape, cigarette-ends, and
the papers of caramels. . . . Under the bed the toes, pointed and
square, of slippers of all kinds peeped out in a long row. And it
seemed to the lieutenant that the scent of the jasmine came not
from the flowers, but from the bed and the slippers.

"And what is the sum owing?" asked Susanna Moiseyevna.

"Two thousand three hundred."

"Oho!" said the Jewess, showing another large black eye. "And you
call that--a small sum! However, it's just the same paying it
to-day or paying it in a week, but I've had so many payments to
make in the last two months since my father's death. . . . Such a
lot of stupid business, it makes my head go round! A nice idea! I
want to go abroad, and they keep forcing me to attend to these silly
things. Vodka, oats . . ." she muttered, half closing her eyes,
"oats, bills, percentages, or, as my head-clerk says, 'percentage.'
. . . It's awful. Yesterday I simply turned the excise officer out.
He pesters me with his Tralles. I said to him: 'Go to the devil
with your Tralles! I can't see any one!' He kissed my hand and went
away. I tell you what: can't your cousin wait two or three months?"

"A cruel question!" laughed the lieutenant. "My cousin can wait a
year, but it's I who cannot wait! You see, it's on my own account
I'm acting, I ought to tell you. At all costs I must have money,
and by ill-luck my cousin hasn't a rouble to spare. I'm forced to
ride about and collect debts. I've just been to see a peasant, our
tenant; here I'm now calling on you; from here I shall go on to
somewhere else, and keep on like that until I get together five
thousand