One dreary September morning the ambulance-van drew up in the courtyard of the Infirmary, and Pronim lifted from it another victim of the epidemic, a yellow-faced, emaciated, half-dead little lad in motley clothes, stained with many colours.

"Another case from Petounukoff's house!" said the driver of the van in answer to a question as to the quarter from which he had brought the new patient.

"Tschischik!" cried Orloff in a tone of pain. "Good heavens! it is Senka. Little imp, don't you recognize me?"

"Yes, I do," said Tschischik with an effort, as he lay on the stretcher, turning up his eyes to catch a glimpse of Orloff, who was standing behind him.

"Ah! you merry little bird! How did this happen?" asked Orloff. He was quite upset at the sight of the lad, who was completely exhausted with the painful disease.

"Why could it not spare this Innocent child?" he cried out, shaking his head slowly, and as if concentrating in this cry all his tense horror.

Tschischik was silent, and shivered from head to foot.

"I am so cold!" he said, as they laid him on the bed and took off his ragged, paint-stained clothes.

"We'll soon pop you into a nice hot bath!" Orloff promised him. "We'll make you well again in a hurry."

Tschischik shook his head.

"No, Uncle Grigori.... I shall never be well again," he whispered in a dead voice.... "Bend down towards me.... I stole the accordion ... it is hidden under some wood in the woodshed.... The day before yesterday ... I played on it for the first time.... Oh! what a beauty it is I ... Directly after I had these pains in my stomach.... They were a punishment for the sin.... Give it back, Uncle Grigori.... The accordion-player had a sister.... Ah!... A ... ah!"

His whole body shook and twisted with violent cramps. All they could do was done for the little lad, but the weakened body was unable to guard the spark of life. That same evening Orloff carried Tschischik's body to the mortuary. He felt as if he had himself received a blow or an injury. He tried to straighten out the little body, but could not succeed in doing so. He left the place with a stunned feeling, in a dark, melancholy mood, with the image of the once bright and cheerful, but now so frightfully disfigured boy, constantly before his eyes.

He had the oppressive consciousness of his own helplessness when face to face with death. How much trouble and care he had lavished on poor little Tschischik, and how anxious the doctors had been to cure the lad!... But in spite of it all he had to die!... It all seemed so unjust!... He himself also, Grigori Orloff, would have some day to pack up his traps in the same way, leaving nothing behind. Then all would be over. A shudder ran through him, and he immediately experienced a feeling of loneliness, of being forsaken. He felt the need of talking to some understanding person about it all. He had often tried to get a long talk with one of the students, but no one here had time to philosophize. So there was nothing for it but to talk to his wife. In a heavy, oppressed mood he sought out Matrona.

She was just off duty, and was washing herself in a corner of the room. The samovar stood ready, simmering and steaming on the table.

Grigori sat down in silence, and looked at Matrona's bared, round shoulders. The samovar boiled up, and spurted drops of hot steam around. Matrona also splashed the water about with her washing. In the corridor outside, the attendants' footsteps could be heard hurrying backwards and forwards, and Grigori tried to guess, from the sound of the steps, who was passing. Suddenly it seemed to him as if Matrona's shoulders were as cold and as damp with perspiration as was the body of the little Tschischik, as he tossed about on his bed in the agony of cholera cramps.

Grigori shuddered, and said in a low voice—

"Senka is dead...."

"Dead!... Senka dead? God rest his soul!" exclaimed Matrona piously, scarcely pausing in her noisy ablutions, and spluttering the soapsuds from mouth and nose.

"I feel sorry for the poor child," said Grigori in a sad voice.

"But he was a mischievous lad, though," Matrona interjected.

"Well, leave him in peace now he is dead and gone! It's not our business what he was when alive.... I am truly sorry he is dead! He was such a quick, bright boy! The accordion ... hm! He was indeed a sharp lad! Sometimes the thought used to cross my mind that I should like to have him to teach,—not exactly as an apprentice. He was an orphan, he might have got attached to us, and have taken the place of a son.... I fear we shall never have children!... I don't understand why. Such a strong, hearty woman as you are, and yet you bear no children.... You had one, and there was an end of it!... Ah! if we only had a couple of little squallers, I believe our life would not be so tedious.... As things are, I work and work, and what is the end of it all? Just to provide daily bread for you and me!... And why do we need daily bread? So that we may be able to work.... And so life goes round in a circle without sense or meaning. . If we only had children they would change our life entirely ... yes, entirely..."

All this was said in a fretful, dissatisfied tone of voice, his head sunk on his breast Matrona stood listening to all he had to say; but growing gradually paler and paler.

"I am strong and healthy; so are you," continued Grigori; "and yet we have no children. What is the reason?... I think and think about it till I get quite melancholy, and take to drinking in sheer desperation!"

"What you are saying is not true!" said Matrona in a firm loud voice. "You are not speaking the truth! Never dare to repeat to me what you have just said!... If you take to drink, it is only your own dissipated habits that prevent your keeping away from it My not having children has nothing to do with it! That idea is false, Grigori!"

Grigori was stunned by her words. He rose and leaned against the back of his chair, watching his wife, and scarcely recognizing her. Never before had he seen her in such a rage; looking at him with so much pitiless anger in her eyes; never before had she spoke with such fierce strength.

"Go on!... Go on!.." said Grigori defiantly, whilst he clutched the back of the chair. "I should like to hear what else you have got to say!"

"You shall soon hear!... I should never have said what I have just said, if you had not reproached me so unfairly! You tell me I do not bear you children!... Very well!... Never will I bear you a child.... I have no wish to bear one to you, after the way you have treated me!"

Her voice broke with sobs, but she almost screamed the last words.

"Stop that noise!" said her husband in a severe voice.

"Would you like me to remind you why I have no children?... Just remember, Grischka, how you have always ill-treated me, and constantly kicked me about the body! Just reckon up the blows and knocks you have given me, the times you have tortured me! How often have you made the blood flow? My clothes were often soaked with blood. And it's your cruelty, my dear husband, that has prevented my having children! ... And now you reproach me with it?... Are you not ashamed to look into my eyes, you murderer—you?... Yes, you are a murderer, for you have killed your own children! And now you want to lay the blame upon me!... upon me, who bore everything, who forgave you everything! But these words I can never forget or forgive; to my dying hour I shall remember them! ... Did you imagine then that I did not, like other women, long for children? Did you think I did not wish to have any?... Many and many a night, when I lay sleepless, I have prayed the good God to save the child in my womb from you ... you murderer! When I see some other woman's child, I could cry with envy and bitterness, because such happiness is denied me.... Ah! Holy Virgin! How often have I wished that Senka were my child! How I would have cared for him!... And then, notwithstanding all this, for you to reproach me with not bearing you a child!..."

She had grown breathless, and the words poured incoherently from her lips. Her face was congested, and showed red patches under the skin; she trembled and clutched her throat, which was choked with sobs.

Grigori sat white and troubled, still holding on tightly to his chair; watching with wide-open eyes this woman, his wife, but who seemed now a stranger to him. He was afraid of her ... he was afraid she might seize him and throttle him. She seemed to threaten him with her flashing angry eyes. At this moment she was immeasurably his superior; he felt it and feared her accordingly. He could not jump up and strike her, as he would have done formerly, for he could not help being overawed by the moral and mental force, which seemed to make of her a new being.

"You have wounded my soul, Grischka!... Your sin and your guilt towards me are great.... I bore everything and kept silence.... Why was that? Because I loved you ... and I still love you, but I will not bear these reproaches from you ... it's beyond my strength to do so.... Though you are the husband whom Heaven has given me, I curse you for those words of yours!"

"Silence!" roared Grigori, showing his teeth.

"Halloa! What's all this row about? Have you forgotten where you are?... We can have no squabbles here!"

A mist seemed to rise before Grischka's eyes. He did not notice who was standing in the doorway, speaking in these full bass tones, but pushing the intruder aside, rushed past him into the open air. Matrona stood for a moment in the middle of the room, as if struck blind and dumb, then stumbled with outstretched hands towards her bed and threw herself down on it, sobbing aloud.

It was already growing dark. The silvery rays of the moon, piercing the torn edges of the clouds, fell across the floor, throwing the rest of the room into blue shadow. By and by a thick drizzling rain began to beat against the window-panes, and run down the walls of the Infirmary—sounding like a herald of the approaching autumn with its damp, reeking, darkening days. The pendulum of the clock, with its monotonous tick-tick, marked the passing of the minutes. The drops of rain pattered ceaselessly against the window-panes. Hour after hour passed, and still the rain continued to fall On her bed the woman lay motionless, staring with wide-open feverish eyes at the ceiling. Her face was dark and careworn, her teeth were firmly clenched, and her cheek-bones seemed to stand out prominently; in her eyes there was an expression of sadness and of painful expectation. Still the rain continued to beat against the walls and the windows. It sounded like some one whispering in a monotonous but persuasive voice, trying to bring conviction; without possessing the power to do this rapidly and with telling arguments; and who was therefore attempting to obtain his object by this painful, tedious droning, entirely wanting in the enthusiasm of real belief.

The grey twilight of a rainy dawn tinged the sky with the colour of steel which has lost its polish. Sleep had not yet visited Matrona's eyes. Ever through the monotonous drip, drip of the rain she seemed to hear the ominously repeated question—

"What will happen next? What will happen next?"

This question seemed to press in on her soul with irresistible force, and resounded like a dull pain through her brain.

"What will happen next?"

She feared to answer the question, though now and then the answer would suggest itself in spite of herself, in the image of her drunken, brutally cruel husband. It was so hard for her to relinquish the dream of a peaceful life, filled with love—this dream which she had cherished for the last few weeks—and she strove with all her might to repel her ominous forebodings. At the same time it became clearer to her that if Grigori were to return to his former evil ways, their life together would be utterly impossible. She had seen him as a different being; she herself had become different, and she could only look back upon her past life with abhorrence and with fear. New sensations, unknown to her before, had awoke within her. But after all she was but a woman, and after a time she began to reproach herself with her share in the quarrel that had just taken place.

"How did it all come about?"

"Good Lord! I seem to have quite lost my senses!..."

Another whole sad hour went by in these painful contradictory thoughts. It had become broad daylight; a thick mist lay over the fields, whilst the sky was hidden by grey, heavy clouds.

"Matrona, it is time to go to your work!" Mechanically obeying the summons, she rose slowly, washed herself, and went with listless, heavy steps into the ward. Here, her languid appearance, her sad face and swollen eyes, immediately attracted the attention of those on duty.

"What is the matter with you then, Matrona? Are you ill?" asked the lady doctor.

"No, I am all right."

"You can speak openly; don't fear to give trouble. You know if there is anything the matter I can find a substitute for you."

Matrona was troubled at the thought of this kind-hearted but strange person perceiving the anguish that was in her soul; so, summoning up her last remnant of courage, she replied smilingly, but with an aching heart—

"There is really nothing the matter!... I have had a bit of a quarrel with my husband.... It's all over now.... And it's really nothing new."

"Poor soul!" sighed the lady doctor, who knew all about Matrona's former life.

Matrona felt as if she should like to fall down at the feet of this woman and break into loud sobs. But she controlled herself and pressed her lips firmly together, to keep back the tears which it required all her self-control to restrain.

As soon as she was off duty she returned at once to her room. Casting a look out of window she saw the ambulance-van coming along through the fields, evidently bringing another patient to the Infirmary. Still the same thick fine rain fell ceaselessly from the clouds—the fields were empty and deserted. Matrona turned away from the window, and with a heavy sigh sat down at the table.

"What was going to happen next?" Still this question sounded through her brain, and her heart beat time in unison with the words. For a long time she sat there alone in a sort of heavy stupor, though each footstep in the corridor made her start and glance anxiously at the door....

When at last it opened, and Grigori himself appeared, she neither started nor moved, for she felt at that moment as if the heavy rain-clouds outside had suddenly fallen on her, crushing her with their weight.

Grigori remained standing near the door, then, throwing on the floor his wet cap, he approached Matrona with heavy creaking footsteps. He was wet through, the water was pouring from him. His face was flushed, his eyes looked dim, on his lips was a broad, foolish smile. As he came nearer Matrona could hear the water oozing out of his boots. He looked a pitiful object, and Matrona even in her worst dreams had never imagined him thus.

"What a sight you are," she said quietly.

"Shall I fall down at your feet and beg your forgiveness?" Grischka asked with a weak, sheepish movement of his head.

She was silent

"No?... Well, just as you like!... I have been walking about the whole night thinking it out as to whether I am guilty towards you or not. At last I made up my mind; yes, I am guilty.... And now I come to ask your pardon; will you grant it?"

Still she remained dumb; her heart was tom with bitter recollections, for as he stood before her he reeked of vodka.

"Just listen!... Don't make too many grimaces about it! Take advantage of my being sober and friendly," said Grigori, in a louder and more threatening voice. "Will you forgive me?"

"You are drunk," said Matrona, sighing. "Go and have your s............