he
Crimea. Her husband, delighted, gazed tenderly at her enthusiastic
face, listened, and from time to time put in a question.

"But they say living is dreadfully expensive there?" he asked, among
other things.

"Well, what shall I say? To my thinking this talk of its being so
expensive is exaggerated, hubby. The devil is not as black as he
is painted. Yulia Petrovna and I, for instance, had very decent and
comfortable rooms for twenty roubles a day. Everything depends on
knowing how to do things, my dear. Of course if you want to go up
into the mountains . . . to Aie-Petri for instance . . . if you
take a horse, a guide, then of course it does come to something.
It's awful what it comes to! But, Vassitchka, the mountains there!
Imagine high, high mountains, a thousand times higher than the
church. . . . At the top--mist, mist, mist. . . . At the bottom
--enormous stones, stones, stones. . . . And pines. . . . Ah, I
can't bear to think of it!"

"By the way, I read about those Tatar guides there, in some magazine
while you were away . . . . such abominable stories! Tell me is
there really anything out of the way about them?"

Natalya Mihalovna made a little disdainful grimace and shook her
head.

"Just ordinary Tatars, nothing special . . ." she said, "though
indeed I only had a glimpse of them in the distance. They were
pointed out to me, but I did not take much notice of them. You know,
hubby, I always had a prejudice against all such Circassians, Greeks
. . . Moors!"

"They are said to be terrible Don Juans."

"Perhaps! There are shameless creatures who . . . ."

Natalya Mihalovna suddenly jumped up from her chair, as though she
had thought of something dreadful; for half a minute she looked
with frightened eyes at her husband and said, accentuating each
word:

"Vassitchka, I say, the im-mo-ral women there are in the world! Ah,
how immoral! And it's not as though they were working-class or
middle-class people, but aristocratic ladies, priding themselves
on their _bon-ton!_ It was simply awful, I could not believe my own
eyes! I shall remember it as long as I live! To think that people
can forget themselves to such a point as . . . ach, Vassitchka, I
don't like to speak of it! Take my companion, Yulia Petrovna, for
example. . . . Such a good husband, two children . . . she moves
in a decent circle, always poses as a saint--and all at once,
would you believe it. . . . Only, hubby, of course this is _entre