s all a photograph when he said good-bye to us yesterday,
with his autograph."

Gagin struck a match against the wall and lighted a candle. But
before he had moved a step from the bed to fetch the photographs
he heard behind him a piercing, heartrending shriek. Looking round,
he saw his wife's large eyes fastened upon him, full of amazement,
horror, and wrath. . . .

"You took your dressing-gown off in the kitchen?" she said, turning
pale.

"Why?"

"Look at yourself!"

The deputy procurator looked down at himself, and gasped.

Flung over his shoulders was not his dressing-gown, but the fireman's
overcoat. How had it come on his shoulders? While he was settling
that question, his wife's imagination was drawing another picture,
awful and impossible: darkness, stillness, whispering, and so on,
and so on.

A PLAY

"PAVEL VASSILYEVITCH, there's a lady here, asking for you," Luka
announced. "She's been waiting a good hour. . . ."

Pavel Vassilyevitch had only just finished lunch. Hearing of the
lady, he frowned and said:

"Oh, damn her! Tell her I'm busy."

"She has been here five times already, Pavel Vassilyevitch. She
says she really must see you. . . . She's almost crying."

"H'm . . . very well, then, ask her into the study."

Without haste Pavel Vassilyevitch put on his coat, took a pen in
one hand, and a book in the other, and trying to look as though he
were very busy he went into the study. There the visitor was awaiting
him--a large stout lady with a red, beefy face, in spectacles.
She looked very respectable, and her dress was more than fashionable
(she had on a crinolette of four storeys and a high hat with a
reddish bird in it). On seeing him she turned up her eyes and folded
her hands in supplication.

"You don't remember me, of course," she began in a high masculine
tenor, visibly agitated. "I . . . I have had the pleasure of meeting
you at the Hrutskys. . . . I am Mme. Murashkin. . . ."

"A. . . a . . . a . . . h'm . . . Sit down! What can I do for you?"

"You . . . you see . . . I . . . I . . ." the lady went on, sitting
down and becoming still more agitated. "You don't remember me. . . .
I'm Mme. Murashkin. . . . You see I'm a great admirer of your
talent and always read your articles with great enjoyment. . . .
Don't imagine I'm flattering you--God forbid!--I'm only giving
honour where honour is due. . . . I am always reading you . . .
always! To some extent I am myself not a strange