my own volition I forestalled what Gubin might
next have been going to say by remarking:

"I must tell you that last night he saw you walking in the garden here."

"Indeed?" she ejaculated, and drew herself to her full height. Yet in
doing so she blushed to her shoulders, and, clapping plump hands to her
bosom, and opening dark eyes to their fullest, said in a hasty and
confused whisper as, again paling and shrinking in stature, she
subsided like a piece of pastry that is turning heavy:

"Good Lord! WHAT did he see?... If the lame woman should call, you
must not admit her. No, tell her that she will not be wanted, that I
cannot, that I must not--But see here. Here is a rouble for you. Oh,
good Lord!"

By this time even louder and more angry exclamations had begun to
ascend from Gubin. Yet the only sound to reach my ears was the woman's
muttered whispering, and as I glanced into her face I perceived that
its hitherto high-coloured and rounded contours had fallen in, and
turned grey, and that her flushed lips were trembling to such an extent
as almost to prevent the articulation of her words. Lastly, her eyes
were frozen into an expression of pitiful, doglike terror.

Suddenly she shrugged her shoulders, straightened her form, put away
from her the expression of terror, and said quietly, but incisively:

"You will not need to say anything about this. Allow me."

And with a swaying step she departed--a step so short as almost to
convey the impression that her legs were bound together. Yet while the
gait was the gait of a person full of suppressed fury, it was also the
gait of a person who can scarcely see an inch in advance.

"Haul away, you!" shouted Gubin.

I hauled him up in a state of cold and wet; whereafter he fell to
stamping around the coping of the well, cursing, and waving his arms.

"What have you been thinking of all this time?" he vociferated. "Why,
for ever so long I shouted and shouted to you!"

"I have been telling Nadezhda that last night you saw her walking in
the garden."

He sprang towards me with a vicious scowl.

"Who gave you leave to do so?" he exclaimed.

"Wait a moment. I said that it was only in a dream, that you saw her
crossing the garden to the washhouse."

"Indeed? And why did you do that?"

Somehow, as, barelegged and dripping with mud, he stood blinking his
eyes at me with a most disagreeable expression, he looked extremely
comical.

"See here," I remarked, "you have o