And suddenly, moving closer to me, she began telling me about herself, Pashka, and the relations that existed between them. She was a girl of the streets, and he, the baker, had a red mustache and played the harmonica very well. He had visited the house, and she had liked him very much because he was jovial and dressed neatly. He wore a fifteen-ruble coat and accordion-pleated boots. For these reasons she had fallen in love with him, and he had become her “man.” And having established himself in this position, he proceeded to take away from her the money that other guests gave her for candy, and getting drunk on it, would beat her up. What was worse was that he began to take up with other girls before her very eyes.…

“Doesn’t that hurt me? I’m no worse than the others. He is simply making a fool of me, the scoundrel. The day before yesterday I got leave of the madam to go for a walk, I came to his place, and there was Dunka sitting with him, drunk. And he, too, was soused. I says to him: ‘You scoundrel, you crook, you!’ He beat me up plenty. He kicked me and pulled me by the hair, and more. I wouldn’t have minded that so much, but he tore my clothes. What can I do now? How can I show myself to the madam? He ripped everything…my dress, my jacket, and it was quite new…and he pulled the kerchief off my head.…Lord! What will become of me now,” she suddenly wailed in an anguished, broken voice.

The wind was howling, growing colder and sharper.…Again my teeth began to jig, and she too shrugged together with cold. She pressed so close to me that I could see the gleam of her eyes through the darkness.

“What blackguards all you men are! I’d like to trample on you, I’d like to maim you! If one of you was croaking, I’d spit in his mug without any pity. Mean, nasty things! You wheedle and wheedle, you wag your tails like nasty curs, but once we’re fools enough to give ourselves to you, it’s all over with us! You step on us right away.…You mangy loafers!”

She cursed richly, but her curses were without strength; she had neither malice nor hatred toward these “mangy loafers,” as far as I could hear. The tone of her speech was out of keeping with its substance, for she spoke calmly and there was no variation in her voice. But it affected me more forcibly than the most eloquent and convincing books and speeches of a pessimistic cast, of which I have read and heard enough in my day. And that, you see, is because an actual death-agony is always more natural and more affecting than the most exact and artistic descriptions of death.

I felt wretched, undoubtedly more because of the cold than because of my neighbor’s words. I groaned softly and ground my teeth.

Almost instantly I felt two small cold hands upon me. One of them touched my neck and the other was laid upon my face, and at the same time I heard a gentle, anxious, affectionate voice:

“What’s the matter?”

I was ready to believe that someone else was asking this question, not Natasha, who had just declared that all men were scoundrels, and who wanted to see them all destroyed. But already she spoke hurriedly.

“What’s the matter, eh? Are you cold? Are you freezing? Oh, what a queer one you are, you sit there as silent as an owl! Why didn’t you tell me that you were cold? Come…lie down…stretch out, and I’ll lie down too…so! Now put your arms round me…tighter! Well, now you ought to be warm.…And then we’ll lie back to back.…Somehow we’ll get through the night. See here…have you been drinking?…Did they sack you?…That’s nothing.…”

She was comforting me.…She was encouraging me.

May I be thrice damned! What irony there was in this for me! Think of it! I was seriously occupied at that time with the destiny of mankind; I dreamed of the reorganization of the social order, of political upheavals; I read all manner of devilishly clever books, whose profound depths were not to be fathomed even by their authors—in those days I was trying my best to make of myself “an active, significant force.” And