ied Zinaida Fyodorovna,
and she struck the plate with her knife. "You are a thief! Do you
hear?"

Zinaida Fyodorovna flung her dinner-napkin on the table, and with
a pitiful, suffering face, went quickly out of the room. Loudly
sobbing and wailing something indistinct, Polya, too, went away.
The soup and the grouse got cold. And for some reason all the
restaurant dainties on the table struck me as poor, thievish, like
Polya. Two pies on a plate had a particularly miserable and guilty
air. "We shall be taken back to the restaurant to-day," they seemed
to be saying, "and to-morrow we shall be put on the table again for
some official or celebrated singer."

"She is a fine lady, indeed," I heard uttered in Polya's room. "I
could have been a lady like that long ago, but I have some self-respect!
We'll see which of us will be the first to go!"

Zinaida Fyodorovna rang the bell. She was sitting in her room, in
the corner, looking as though she had been put in the corner as a
punishment.

"No telegram has come?" she asked.

"No, madam."

"Ask the porter; perhaps there is a telegram. And don't leave the
house," she called after me. "I am afraid to be left alone."

After that I had to run down almost every hour to ask the porter
whether a telegram had come. I must own it was a dreadful time! To
avoid seeing Polya, Zinaida Fyodorovna dined and had tea in her own
room; it was here that she slept, too, on a short sofa like a
half-moon, and she made her own bed. For the first days I took the
telegrams; but, getting no answer, she lost her faith in me and
began telegraphing herself. Looking at her, I, too, began impatiently
hoping for a telegram. I hoped he would contrive some deception,
would make arrangements, for instance, that a telegram should be
sent to her from some station. If he were too much engrossed with
cards or had been attracted by some other woman, I thought that
both Gruzin and Kukushkin would remind him of us. But our expectations
were vain. Five times a day I would go in to Zinaida Fyodorovna,
intending to tell her the truth, But her eyes looked piteous as a
fawn's, her shoulders seemed to droop, her lips were moving, and I
went away again without saying a word. Pity and sympathy seemed to
rob me of all manliness. Polya, as cheerful and well satisfied with
herself as though nothing had happened, was tidying the master's
study and the bedroom, rummaging in the cupboards, and making the
crockery jingle, and