confess my brain is melting with the heat."

"That's all nonsense," said the zoologist. "You can get used to the
heat, and you can get used to being without the deaconess. You
mustn't be slack; you must pull yourself together."

V

Nadyezhda Fyodorovna went to bathe in the morning, and her cook,
Olga, followed her with a jug, a copper basin, towels, and a sponge.
In the bay stood two unknown steamers with dirty white funnels,
obviously foreign cargo vessels. Some men dressed in white and
wearing white shoes were walking along the harbour, shouting loudly
in French, and were answered from the steamers. The bells were
ringing briskly in the little church of the town.

"To-day is Sunday!" Nadyezhda Fyodorovna remembered with pleasure.

She felt perfectly well, and was in a gay holiday humour. In a new
loose-fitting dress of coarse thick tussore silk, and a big
wide-brimmed straw hat which was bent down over her ears, so that
her face looked out as though from a basket, she fancied she looked
very charming. She thought that in the whole town there was only
one young, pretty, intellectual woman, and that was herself, and
that she was the only one who knew how to dress herself cheaply,
elegantly, and with taste. That dress, for example, cost only
twenty-two roubles, and yet how charming it was! In the whole town
she was the only one who could be attractive, while there were
numbers of men, so they must all, whether they would or not, be
envious of Laevsky.