roubles. I need money awfully!"

"Nonsense! What does a young man want with money? Whims, mischief.
Why, have you been going in for dissipation? Or losing at cards?
Or are you getting married?"

"You've guessed!" laughed the lieutenant, and rising slightly from
his seat, he clinked his spurs. "I really am going to be married."

Susanna Moiseyevna looked intently at her visitor, made a wry face,
and sighed.

"I can't make out what possesses people to get married!" she said,
looking about her for her pocket-handkerchief. "Life is so short,
one has so little freedom, and they must put chains on themselves!"

"Every one has his own way of looking at things. . . ."

"Yes, yes, of course; every one has his own way of looking at things
. . . . But, I say, are you really going to marry some one poor? Are
you passionately in love? And why must you have five thousand? Why
won't four do, or three?"

"What a tongue she has!" thought the lieutenant, and answered: "The
difficulty is that an officer is not allowed by law to marry till
he is twenty-eight; if you choose to marry, you have to leave the
Service or else pay a deposit of five thousand."

"Ah, now I understand. Listen. You said just now that every one has
his own way of looking at things. . . . Perhaps your fiancee is
some one special and remarkable, but . . . but I am utterly unable
to understand how any decent man can live with a woman. I can't for
the life of me understand it. I have lived, thank the Lord,
twenty-seven years, and I have never yet seen an endurable woman.
They're all affected minxes, immoral, liars. . . . The only ones I
can put up with are cooks and housemaids, but so-called ladies I
won't let come within shooting distance of me. But, thank God, they
hate me and don't force themselves on me! If one of them wants money
she sends her husband, but nothing will induce her to come herself,
not from pride--no, but from cowardice; she's afraid of my making
a scene. Oh, I understand their hatred very well! Rather! I openly
display what they do their very utmost to conceal from God and man.
How can they help hating me? No doubt you've heard bushels of scandal
about me already. . . ."

"I only arrived here so lately . . ."

"Tut, tut, tut! . . . I see from your eyes! But your brother's wife,
surely she primed you for this expedition? Think of letting a young
man come to see such an awful woman without warning him--how could
she? Ha, ha! . . . But tell