tting at the table, writing something on a
scrap of paper.

"I must send a telegram," she said, with a smile. "Go to the station
as quick as you can and ask them to send it after him."

Going out into the street, I read on the scrap of paper:

"May the New Year bring new happiness. Make haste and telegraph; I
miss you dreadfully. It seems an eternity. I am only sorry I can't
send a thousand kisses and my very heart by telegraph. Enjoy yourself,
my darling.--ZINA."

I sent the telegram, and next morning I gave her the receipt.

IX

The worst of it was that Orlov had thoughtlessly let Polya, too,
into the secret of his deception, telling her to bring his shirts
to Sergievsky Street. After that, she looked at Zinaida Fyodorovna
with a malignant joy and hatred I could not understand, and was
never tired of snorting with delight to herself in her own room and
in the hall.

"She's outstayed her welcome; it's time she took herself off!" she
would say with zest. "She ought to realise that herself. . . ."

She already divined by instinct that Zinaida Fyodorovna would not
be with us much longer, and, not to let the chance slip, carried
off everything she set her eyes on--smelling-bottles, tortoise-shell
hairpins, handkerchiefs, shoes! On the day after New Year's Day,
Zinaida Fyodorovna summoned me to her room and told me in a low
voice that she missed her black dress. And then she walked through
all the rooms, with a pale, frightened, and indignant face, talking
to herself:

"It's too much! It's beyond everything. Why, it's unheard-of
insolence!"

At dinner she tried to help herself to soup, but could not--her
hands were trembling. Her lips were trembling, too. She looked
helplessly at the soup and at the little pies, waiting for the
trembling to pass off, and suddenly she could not resist looking
at Polya.

"You can go, Polya," she said. "Stepan is enough by himself."

"I'll stay; I don't mind," answered Polya.

"There's no need for you to stay. You go away altogether," Zinaida
Fyodorovna went on, getting up in great agitation. "You may look
out for another place. You can go at once."

"I can't go away without the master's orders. He engaged me. It
must be as he orders."

"You can take orders from me, too! I am mistress here!" said Zinaida
Fyodorovna, and she flushed crimson.

"You may be the mistress, but only the master can dismiss me. It
was he engaged me."

"You dare not stay here another minute!" cr