pping him at Pekarsky's door,
I got out of the cab and rang. When the porter came to the door, I
asked aloud, that Zinaida Fyodorovna might hear, whether Georgy
Ivanitch was at home.

"Yes," was the answer, "he came in half an hour ago. He must be in
bed by now. What do you want?"

Zinaida Fyodorovna could not refrain from putting her head out.

"Has Georgy Ivanitch been staying here long?" she asked.

"Going on for three weeks."

"And he's not been away?"

"No," answered the porter, looking at me with surprise.

"Tell him, early to-morrow," I said, "that his sister has arrived
from Warsaw. Good-bye."

Then we drove on. The cab had no apron, the snow fell on us in big
flakes, and the wind, especially on the Neva, pierced us through
and through. I began to feel as though we had been driving for a
long time, that for ages we had been suffering, and that for ages
I had been listening to Zinaida Fyodorovna's shuddering breath. In
semi-delirium, as though half asleep, I looked back upon my strange,
incoherent life, and for some reason recalled a melodrama, "The
Parisian Beggars," which I had seen once or twice in my childhood.
And when to shake off that semi-delirium I peeped out from the hood
and saw the dawn, all the images of the past, all my misty thoughts,
for some reason, blended in me into one distinct, overpowering
thought: everything was irrevocably over for Zinaida Fyodorovna and
for me. This was as certain a conviction as though the cold blue
sky contained a prophecy, but a minute later I was already thinking
of something else and believed differently.

"What am I now?" said Zinaida Fyodorovna, in a voice husky with the
cold and the damp. "Where am I to go? What am I to do? Gruzin told
me to go into a nunnery. Oh, I would! I would change my dress, my
face, my name, my thoughts . . . everything--everything, and would
hide myself for ever. But they will not take me into a nunnery. I
am with child."

"We will go abroad together to-morrow," I said.

"That's impossible. My husband won't give me a passport."

"I will take you without a passport."

The cabman stopped at a wooden house of two storeys, painted a dark
colour. I rang. Taking from me her small light basket--the only
luggage we had brought with us--Zinaida Fyodorovna gave a wry
smile and said:

"These are my _bijoux_."

But she was so weak that she could not carry these _bijoux_.

It was a long while before the door was opened. After the