"What have you been reading this week since I saw you last?" he
asked now. "Do please tell me."

"I have been reading Pisemsky."

"What exactly?"

"'A Thousand Souls,'" answered Kitten. "And what a funny name
Pisemsky had--Alexey Feofilaktitch!

"Where are you going?" cried Startsev in horror, as she suddenly
got up and walked towards the house. "I must talk to you; I want
to explain myself. . . . Stay with me just five minutes, I supplicate
you!"

She stopped as though she wanted to say something, then awkwardly
thrust a note into his hand, ran home and sat down to the piano
again.

"Be in the cemetery," Startsev read, "at eleven o'clock to-night,
near the tomb of Demetti."

"Well, that's not at all clever," he thought, coming to himself.
"Why the cemetery? What for?"

It was clear: Kitten was playing a prank. Who would seriously dream
of making an appointment at night in the cemetery far out of the
town, when it might have been arranged in the street or in the town
gardens? And was it in keeping with him--a district doctor, an