Mile.  Ilovaisky was awakened by a strange uproar.  She jumped up and looked about her in astonishment.  The deep blue dawn was looking in at the window half-covered with snow.  In the room there was a grey twilight, through which the stove and the sleeping child and Nasir-ed-Din stood out distinctly.  The stove and the lamp were both out.  Through the wide-open door she could see the big tavern room with a counter and chairs.  A man, with a stupid, gipsy face and astonished eyes, was standing in the middle of the room in a puddle of melting snow, holding a big red star on a stick.  He was surrounded by a group of boys, motionless as statues, and plastered over with snow.  The light shone through the red paper of the star, throwing a glow of red on their wet faces.  The crowd was shouting in disorder, and from its uproar Mile.  Ilovaisky could make out only one couplet: 

“Hi, you Little Russian lad,
Bring your sharp knife,
We will kill the Jew, we will kill him,
The son of tribulation. . .”

Liharev was standing near the counter, looking feelingly at the singers and tapping his feet in time.  Seeing Mile.  Ilovaisky, he smiled all over his face and came up to her.  She smiled too.

“A happy Christmas!” he said.  “I saw you slept well.”

She looked at him, said nothing, and went on smiling.

After the conversation in the night he seemed to her not tall and broad shouldered, but little, just as the biggest steamer seems to us a little thing when we hear that it has crossed the ocean.

“Well, it is time for me to set off,” she said.  “I must put on my things.  Tell me where you are going now?”

“I?  To the station of Klinushki, from there to Sergievo, and from Sergievo, with horses, thirty miles to the coal mines that belong to a horrid man, a general called Shashkovsky.  My brothers have got me the post of superintendent there. . . .  I am going to be a coal miner.”

“Stay, I know those mines.  Shashkovsky is my uncle, you know.  But . . . what are you going there for?” asked Mlle. Ilovaisky, looking at Liharev in surprise.

“As superintendent.  To superintend the coal mines.”

“I don’t understand!” she shrugged her shoulders.  “You are going to the mines.  But you know, it’s the bare steppe, a desert, so dreary that you couldn’t exist a day there!  It’s horrible coal, no one will buy it, and my uncle’s a maniac, a despot, a bankrupt . . . .  You won’t get your salary!”

“No matter,” said Liharev, unconcernedly, “I am thankful even for coal mines.”

She shrugged her shoulders, and walked about the room in agitation.

“I don’t understand, I don’t understand,” she said, moving her fingers before her face.  “It’s impossible, and . . . and irrational!  You must understand that it’s . . . it’s worse than exile.  It is a living tomb!  O Heavens!” she said hotly, going up to Liharev and moving her fingers before his smiling face; her upper lip was quivering, and her sharp face turned pale, “Come, picture it, the bare steppe, solitude.  There is no one to say a word to there, and you . . . are enthusiastic over women!  Coal mines . . . and women!”