He stood before her with the air of a man expecting her to go, waiting to be left in peace.

“Good-day,” she said, turning towards the door.

“Hm! … and how about my fee?” enquired Finkel, in a jesting tone.

“Oh, yes!” Vanda remembered, blushing, and she handed the Jew the rouble that had been given her for her ring.

When she got out into the street she felt more overwhelmed with shame than before, but now it was not her poverty she was ashamed of. She was unconscious now of not having a big hat and a fashionable jacket. She walked along the street, spitting blood, and brooding on her life, her ugly, wretched life, and the insults she had endured, and would have to endure to-morrow, and next week, and all her life, up to the very day of her death.

“Oh! how awful it is! My God, how fearful!”

Next day, however, she was back at the “Renaissance,” and dancing there. She had on an enormous new red hat, a new fashionable jacket, and bronze shoes. And she was taken out to supper by a young merchant up from Kazan.