advantage of your position to squeeze out of my husband . . . that
weak, unhappy man. . . . On Thursday, when I saw you with my husband
at the harbour you were wearing expensive brooches and bracelets.
So it's no use your playing the innocent lamb to me! I ask you for
the last time: will you give me the things, or not?"

"You are a queer one, upon my word," said Pasha, beginning to feel
offended. "I assure you that, except the bracelet and this little
ring, I've never seen a thing from your Nikolay Petrovitch. He
brings me nothing but sweet cakes."

"Sweet cakes!" laughed the stranger. "At home the children have
nothing to eat, and here you have sweet cakes. You absolutely refuse
to restore the presents?"

Receiving no answer, the lady sat, down and stared into space,
pondering.

"What's to be done now?" she said. "If I don't get nine hundred
roubles, he is ruined, and the children and I am ruined, too. Shall
I kill this low woman or go down on my knees to her?"

The lady pressed her handkerchief to her face and broke into sobs.

"I beg you!" Pasha heard through the stranger's sobs. "You see you
have plundered and ruined my husband. Save him. . . . You have no
feeling for him, but the children . . . the children . . . What
have the children done?"

Pasha imagined little children standing in the street, crying with