the element that set the tone for the town, and she realized that her success depended upon them. They would intrude behind the scenes, would unceremoniously knock at the door of her dressing-room when she was yet half-clad, would address her in endearing terms--and she looked upon it all as a simple formality, an inevitable feature incidental to her profession. All she asked herself was whether she rendered a feature "charmingly" or not. Until now she had not thought of her body or her soul as being public, but for a moment feeling herself a "lady" again, she looked on her past in utter disgust and abhorrence, as if she had been stripped naked and were being exposed on the public square; as if all those vile creatures infected with the odors of wine and the stable had suddenly gripped her in their embrace, as her body felt the contact of hands moist with perspiration, of slabbery lips and the dull, greedy, brutal eyes that lingered animal-like over the curved lines of her nude body. Where was she to go? How was she to throw off that accumulated load, which began to leave its mark on her shoulders? The question tossed in her head desperately--tossed, indeed, for she neither found nor, as a matter of fact, sought an answer. This stay in Golovliovo, too, was a kind of dream. Her past life had been a dream, and her present awakening was a dream. Something had made the little girl ill at ease, and she had become sentimental--that was all. It would pass. There are pleasant moments and there are unpleasant ones--that is how they go. Both merely glide past but do not alter the course of life once determined upon. To give life a new course, to divert its channel, one needs not only moral but also physical courage. It is almost the same as suicide. Before attempting suicide a man may denounce his life, he may be certain that death is the only salvation, yet the weapon of death trembles in his hands, the knife slides harmlessly over the neck, the bullet, instead of striking the forehead, hits lower and only cripples. That is what happened in Anninka's case. She had to kill her former life, but though killing it, she herself had to remain alive. The "nothingness" that in regular suicide is attained by merely pressing the trigger, was to be attained in the peculiar suicide called rejuvenation only after many stern almost ascetic efforts. A pampered person already undermined by the habit of easy living will turn dizzy at the mere perspective of a rejuvenation. He instinctively turns his head away and shuts his eyes. Then filled with shame and accusing himself of lack of courage, he will take the easy way again. Oh, the life of toil is a glorious thing! Yet none but strong people can live it and those who are destined for it because of original sin. They are the only ones it does not frighten; the former because they realize the significance and resources of toil and can find pleasure in it; the latter, because to them toil is first a duty, then a habit.