se you,
and I ought to be ashamed of my feeling. Yes! Your lying has stuck
in my throat these nine years, I have endured it, but now it's too
much--too much."

From the dark corner where Olga Ivanovna was sitting there came the
sound of weeping. The doctor ceased speaking and cleared his throat.
A silence followed. The doctor slowly buttoned up his over-coat,
and began looking for his hat which he had dropped as he walked
about.

"I lost my temper," he muttered, bending down to the floor. "I quite
lost sight of the fact that you cannot attend to me now. . . . God
knows what I have said. . . . Don't take any notice of it, Olga."

He found his hat and went towards the dark corner.

"I have wounded you," he said in a soft, tender half-whisper, "but
once more I entreat you, tell me the truth; there should not be
lying between us. . . . I blurted it out, and now you know that
Petrov and Kurovsky are no secret to me. So now it is easy for you
to tell me the truth."

Olga Ivanovna thought a moment, and with perceptible hesitation,
said:

"Nikolay, I am not lying--Misha is your child."

"My God," moaned the doctor, "then I will tell you something more:
I have kept your letter to Petrov in which you call him Misha's
father! Olga, I know the truth, but I want to hear it from you! Do
you hear?"

Olga Ivanovna made no reply, but went on weeping. After waiting for
an answer the doctor shrugged his shoulders and went out.

"I will come to-morrow," he called from the passage.

All the way home, as he sat in his carriage, he was shrugging his
shoulders and muttering:

"What a pity that I don't know how to speak! I haven't the gift of
persuading and convincing. It's evident she does not understand me
since she lies! It's evident! How can I make her see? How?"

TOO EARLY!

THE bells are ringing for service in the village of Shalmovo. The
sun is already kissing the earth on the horizon; it has turned
crimson and will soon disappear. In Semyon's pothouse, which has
lately changed its name and become a restaurant--a title quite
out of keeping with the wretched little hut with its thatch torn
off its roof, and its couple of dingy windows--two peasant sportsmen
are sitting. One of them is called Filimon Slyunka; he is an old
man of sixty, formerly a house-serf, belonging to the Counts Zavalin,
by trade a carpenter. He has at one time been employed in a nail
factory, has been turned off for drunkenness and idleness, and no