“H’m!” said Pasha, and she shrugged her shoulders.  “I would with pleasure, but God is my witness, he never made me a present of anything.  Believe me, on my conscience.  However, you are right, though,” said the singer in confusion, “he did bring me two little things.  Certainly I will give them back, if you wish it.”

Pasha pulled out one of the drawers in the toilet-table and took out of it a hollow gold bracelet and a thin ring with a ruby in it.

“Here, madam!” she said, handing the visitor these articles.

The lady flushed and her face quivered.  She was offended.

“What are you giving me?” she said.  “I am not asking for charity, but for what does not belong to you . . . what you have taken advantage of your position to squeeze out of my husband . . . that weak, unhappy man. . . .  On Thursday, when I saw you with my husband at the harbour you were wearing expensive brooches and bracelets.  So it’s no use your playing the innocent lamb to me!  I ask you for the last time:  will you give me the things, or not?”

“You are a queer one, upon my word,” said Pasha, beginning to feel offended.  “I assure you that, except the bracelet and this little ring, I’ve never seen a thing from your Nikolay Petrovitch.  He brings me nothing but sweet cakes.”

“Sweet cakes!” laughed the stranger.  “At home the children have nothing to eat, and here you have sweet cakes.  You absolutely refuse to restore the presents?”

Receiving no answer, the lady sat, down and stared into space, pondering.

“What’s to be done now?” she said.  “If I don’t get nine hundred roubles, he is ruined, and the children and I am ruined, too.  Shall I kill this low woman or go down on my knees to her?”

The lady pressed her handkerchief to her face and broke into sobs.

“I beg you!” Pasha heard through the stranger’s sobs.  “You see you have plundered and ruined my husband.  Save him. . . .  You have no feeling for him, but the children . . . the children . . .  What have the children done?”

Pasha imagined little children standing in the street, crying with hunger, and she, too, sobbed.

“What can I do, madam?” she said.  “You say that I am a low woman and that I have ruined Nikolay Petrovitch, and I assure you . . . before God Almighty, I have had nothing from him whatever. . . .  There is only one girl in our chorus who has a rich admirer; all the rest of us live from hand to mouth on bread and kvass.  Nikolay Petrovitch is a highly educated, refined gentleman, so I’ve made him welcome.  We are bound to make gentlemen welcome.”

“I ask you for the things!  Give me the things!  I am crying. . . .  I am humiliating myself. . . .  If you like I will go down on my knees!  If you wish it!”

Pasha shrieked with horror and waved her hands.  She felt that this pale, beautiful lady who expressed herself so grandly, as though she were on the stage, really might go down on her knees to her, simply from pride, from grandeur, to exalt herself and humiliate the chorus girl.