“I to your wife shall tell. . . .  Will not leave an honest maiden in peace. . . .  When I was at Baron Anzig’s, and the baron try to come to me for matches, I understand at once what his matches mean and tell to the baroness. . . .  I am an honest maiden.”

“Hang your honesty!  I am ill I tell you . . . and asking you for drops.  Do you understand?  I’m ill!”

“Your wife is an honest, good woman, and you ought her to love! Ja! She is noble! . . .  I will not be her foe!”

“You are a fool! simply a fool!  Do you understand, a fool?”

Vaxin leaned against the door-post, folded his arms and waited for his panic to pass off.  To return to his room where the lamp flickered and his uncle stared at him from his frame was more than he could face, and to stand at the governess’s door in nothing but his night-shirt was inconvenient from every point of view.  What could he do?

It struck two o’clock and his terror had not left him.  There was no light in the passage and something dark seemed to be peeping out from every corner.  Vaxin turned so as to face the door-post, but at that instant it seemed as though somebody tweaked his night-shirt from behind and touched him on the shoulder.

“Damnation! . . .  Rosalia Karlovna!”

No answer.  Vaxin hesitatingly opened the door and peeped into the room.  The virtuous German was sweetly slumbering.  The tiny flame of a night-light threw her solid buxom person into relief.  Vaxin stepped into the room and sat down on a wickerwork trunk near the door.  He felt better in the presence of a living creature, even though that creature was asleep.

“Let the German idiot sleep,” he thought, “I’ll sit here, and when it gets light I’ll go back. . . .  It’s daylight early now.”

Vaxin curled up on the trunk and put his arm under his head to await the coming of dawn.

“What a thing it is to have nerves!” he reflected.  “An educated, intelligent man! . . .  Hang it all! . . .  It’s a perfect disgrace!”

As he listened to the gentle, even breathing of Rosalia Karlovna, he soon recovered himself completely.

At six o’clock, Vaxin’s wife returned from the all-night service, and not finding her husband in their bedroom, went to the governess to ask her for some change for the cabman.

On entering the German’s room, a strange sight met her eyes.

On the bed lay stretched Rosalia Karlovna fast asleep, and a couple of yards from her was her husband curled up on the trunk sleeping the sleep of the just and snoring loudly.

What she said to her husband, and how he looked when he woke, I leave to others to describe.  It is beyond my powers.

A WORK OF ART

SASHA SMIRNOV, the only son of his mother, holding under his arm, something wrapped up in No. 223 of the Financial News, assumed a sentimental expression, and went into Dr. Koshelkov’s consulting-room.