Anninka spent a restless night. The hysterical mood that had overtaken her at Pogorelka still persisted. There are moments when a person who has been merely existing suddenly realizes that there is a vile ulcer of some kind festering in his life. Where it came from, how it formed itself--one cannot always explain to oneself. In most cases it is not ascribed to the causes that have really brought it on. But an explanation is not even needed. It is sufficient that such an ulcer exists. The effects of such a sudden discovery, while equally painful to everyone, vary in their practical results, with the individual's temperament. Some are rejuvenated and inspired with a determination to begin a new life on new foundations. Others feel but a passing pain that will not bring a profound change for the better, but is even sharper than when the disturbed conscience sees the faint hope of a brighter future. Anninka was not of those in whom the consciousness of ulcers produces the impulse to rejuvenation. Nevertheless, she realized, being an intelligent person, that there was an abyss between the vague dreams of honest toil which had impelled her to leave Pogorelka forever and her position of provincial actress. Instead of a life of quiet and toil, she had fallen upon a stormy existence, filled with perpetual debauchery, shameless obscenity and cynicism, with vain and everlasting bustle. Instead of the privations and stern surroundings in which she had once lived, she had met comparative ease and comfort. She could not think of it now without a blush of shame. She had hardly noticed the gradual transformation. She had wanted to go to a good place but had entered the wrong door. Her desires had been very modest, indeed. How often she had dreamed, in the attic of Pogorelka, of becoming an earnest girl, working, thirsting for education, bearing hardships with fortitude, all for the sake of the good. (It is true, "good" hardly had definite meaning to her.) But as soon as she had stepped out on to the highroad of independent activity, bitter reality had shattered her dreams at once. An honest livelihood does not come of itself, but is attained only by persistent search and previous training which help in the quest to some extent. But neither Anninka's temperament nor education provided her with this. Her temperament was not marked by passion, it was simply sensitive. The material that her education had given her and on which she meant to build up her life of honest toil was so unreliable and poor that it could hardly serve as a basis for serious work. Her education was of the boarding-school, music-hall kind, with the balance tipping to the side of the music-hall. It was a chaotic heap in which problems were piled up about a flock of geese, dancing steps with a shawl, the sermons of Peter of Picardy, the exploits of Fair Helen, the _Ode to Felitza,_ and the prescribed feeling of gratitude to the instructors and patrons of the institution.