“No, merci. . . .  You have fleeced me enough already. . . .  Let me alone, I have been punished already. . . .”

“If you are going to argue like a woman, then of course . . .” sighs Nikitin, getting up.  “Of course. . . .”

“Let me alone. . . .  Come, go away and don’t keep me awake. . . .  I am sick of listening to your nonsense.”

“H’m. . . .  To be sure . . . of course!  Fleeced. . . plundered. . . .  What we give we remember, but we don’t remember what we take.”

“I have never taken anything from you.”

“Is that so?  But when we weren’t a celebrated singer, at whose expense did we live then?  And who, allow me to ask, lifted you out of beggary and secured your happiness?  Don’t you remember that?”

“Come, go to bed.  Go along and sleep it off.”

“Do you mean to say you think I am drunk? . . . if I am so low in the eyes of such a grand lady. . .  I can go away altogether.”

“Do.  A good thing too.”

“I will, too.  I have humbled myself enough.  And I will go.”

“Oh, my God!  Oh, do go, then!  I shall be delighted!”

“Very well, we shall see.”

Nikitin mutters something to himself, and, stumbling over the chairs, goes out of the bedroom.  Then sounds reach her from the entry of whispering, the shuffling of goloshes and a door being shut. Mari d’elle has taken offence in earnest and gone out.

“Thank God, he has gone!” thinks the singer.  “Now I can sleep.”

And as she falls asleep she thinks of her mari d’elle, what sort of a man he is, and how this affliction has come upon her.  At one time he used to live at Tchernigov, and had a situation there as a book-keeper.  As an ordinary obscure individual and not the mari d’elle, he had been quite endurable:  he used to go to his work and take his salary, and all his whims and projects went no further than a new guitar, fashionable trousers, and an amber cigarette-holder.  Since he had become “the husband of a celebrity” he was completely transformed.  The singer remembered that when first she told him she was going on the stage he had made a fuss, been indignant, complained to her parents, turned her out of the house.  She had been obliged to go on the stage without his permission.  Afterwards, when he learned from the papers and from various people that she was earning big sums, he had ‘forgiven her,’ abandoned book-keeping, and become her hanger-on.  The singer was overcome with amazement when she looked at her hanger-on:  when and where had he managed to pick up new tastes, polish, and airs and graces?  Where had he learned the taste of oysters and of different Burgundies?  Who had taught him to dress and do his hair in the fashion and call her ‘Nathalie’ instead of Natasha?”

“It’s strange,” thinks the singer.  “In old days he used to get his salary and put it away, but now a hundred roubles a day is not enough for him.  In old days he was afraid to talk before schoolboys for fear of saying something silly, and now he is overfamiliar even with princes . . . wretched, contemptible little creature!”