or another half-hour and went
to bed.

Next day Polina Nikolaevna sent to the warehouse two books she had
borrowed from him, all his letters and his photographs; with them
was a note consisting of one word--_"basta."_

VIII

Towards the end of October Nina Fyodorovna had unmistakable symptoms
of a relapse. There was a change in her face, and she grew rapidly
thinner. In spite of acute pain she still imagined that she was
getting better, and got up and dressed every morning as though she
were well, and then lay on her bed, fully dressed, for the rest of
the day. And towards the end she became very talkative. She would
lie on her back and talk in a low voice, speaking with an effort
and breathing painfully. She died suddenly under the following
circumstances.

It was a clear moonlight evening. In the street people were tobogganing
in the fresh snow, and their clamour floated in at the window. Nina
Fyodorovna was lying on her back in bed, and Sasha, who had no one
to take turns with her now, was sitting beside her half asleep.

"I don't remember his father's name," Nina Fyodorovna was saying
softly, "but his name was Ivan Kotchevoy--a poor clerk. He was a
sad drunkard, the Kingdom of Heaven be his! He used to come to us,
and every month we used to give him a pound of sugar and two ounces
of tea. And money, too, sometimes, of course. Yes. . . . And then,
this is what happened. Our Kotchevoy began drinking heavily and
died, consumed by vodka. He left a little son, a boy of seven. Poor
little orphan! . . . We took him and hid him in the clerk's quarters,
and he lived there for a whole year, without father's knowing. And
when father did see him, he only waved his hand and said nothing.
When Kostya, the little orphan, was nine years old--by that time
I was engaged to be married--I took him round to all the day
schools. I went from one to the other, and no one would take him.
And he cried. . . . 'What are you crying for, little silly?' I said.
I took him to Razgulyay to the second school, where--God bless
them for it!--they took him, and the boy began going every day
on foot from Pyatnitsky Street to Razgulyay Street and back again
. . . . Alyosha paid for him. . . . By God's grace the boy got on,
was good at his lessons, and turned out well. . . . He's a lawyer
now in Moscow, a friend of Alyosha's, and so good in science. Yes,
we had compassion on a fellow-creature and took him into our house,
and now I daresay, he reme