“Ja, mein Herr,” said the housekeeper indifferently and somewhat loftily, settling into a low chair and lighting a cigarette.  “You pay for one night and instead of that took already the girl for one more night and one more day.  Also, you owe twenty-five more roubles yet.  When we let off a girlie for a night we take ten roubles, and for the twenty-four hours twenty-five roubles.  That’s a tax, like.  Don’t you want a smoke, young man?” she stretched out her case, and Lichonin, without himself knowing why, took a cigarette.

“I wanted to talk with you about something else entirely.”

“O!  Don’t trouble yourself to speak:  I understand everything very well.  Probably the young man wants to take these girl, those Liubka, altogether to himself to set her up, or in order to—­how do you Russians call it?—­in order to safe her?  Yes, yes, yes, that happens.  Twenty-two years I live in a brothel, and I know, that this happens with very foolish young peoples.  But only I assure you, that from this will come nothing out.”

“Whether it will come out or whether it won’t come out—­that is already my affair,” answered Lichonin dully, looking down at his fingers, trembling on his knees.

“O, of course, it’s your affair, my young student,” and the flabby cheeks and majestic chins of Emma Edwardovna began to jump from inaudible laughter.  “From my soul I wish for you love and friendship; but only trouble yourself to tell this nasty creature, this Liubka, that she shouldn’t dare to show even her nose here, when you throw her out into the street like a little doggie.  Let her croak from hunger under a fence, or go into a half-rouble establishment for the soldiers!”

“Believe me, she won’t return.  I ask you merely to give me her certificate, without delay.”

“The certificate?  Ach, if you please!  Even this very minute.  Only I will first trouble you to pay for everything that she took here on credit.  Have a look, here is her account book.  I took it along with me on purpose.  I knew already with what our conversation would end.”  She took out of the slit of her PEGNOIR—­showing Lichonin for just a minute her fat, full-fleshed, yellow, enormous breast—­a little book in a black cover, with the heading:  Account of miss Irene Voschhenkova in the house of ill-fame, maintained by Anna Markovna Shaibes, on Yam-SKAYA street, no.  So-and-so, and extended it to him across the table.  Lichonin turned over the first page and read through four or five paragraphs of the printed rules.  There dryly and briefly it was stated that the account book consists of two copies, of which one is kept by the proprietress while the other remains with the prostitute; that all income and expense were entered into both books; that