Matters grew worse. No sooner did they alight from the train at Kretchetov than they at once found "protectors." Lubinka was taken by Captain Popkov, Anninka by the merchant Zabvenny. But the jolly times were no more. Both Popkov and Zabvenny were coarse, quarrelsome, and rather close-fisted. After three or four months they became considerably colder. The sisters were even less successful on the stage than in love affairs. The manager who had accepted the sisters on the strength of the scandal they had caused at Samovarnov quite unexpectedly found himself out of his reckoning. At the very first performance somebody in the gallery shouted when the two girls made their appearance on the stage, "You convicts!" And the name stuck. It decided Anninka's and Lubinka's theatrical fate. They now lived a dull, drowsy life, devoid of all intellectual interest. The public was cold, the managers scowled at them, the "protectors" would not intercede. Zabvenny dreamed, as once Kukishev had, of how he would "compel" his queen to have a cocktail with him, how she would at first affect horror, and gradually submit. But he was very angry when he found out that she was already past mistress in the art of drinking. The only satisfaction left him was to show his friends how Anninka "guzzled vodka." Popkov, too, was dissatisfied and declared Lubinka had grown thin. "You once had flesh on your bones," he would say, "tell me, where did you lose it?" On account of this, he was not only unceremonious with her, but often even beat her when he was drunk. Toward the end of the winter the sisters had neither "real" admirers nor a "permanent position." They still stuck to the theatre, but there could be no question now either of _Pericola_ or the _Old-time Colonels._ Lubinka was more cheerful, but Anninka, being more high-strung, broke down completely. She seemed to have forgotten the past and was not aware of the present. In addition, she began to cough suspiciously, apparently on her way toward an enigmatic malady. Next summer was terrible. Gradually the sisters were taken to hotels and were given to travelling gentlemen for a moderate fixed price. Scandals and beatings followed one another, but the sisters clung to life desperately, with the tenacity of cats. They reminded one of those wretched dogs who, in spite of being crippled by a beating, crawl back to their favorite place, whining as they go. It was not proper to keep women like that on the stage. In those dark days only once did a ray of light find its way into Anninka's existence. Miloslavsky X, the tragedian, sent her a letter from Samovarnov in which he persistently offered her his hand and heart. Anninka read the letter and cried. The night long she tossed about in bed, and in the morning she sent a curt reply, "Why? Only that we may drink together?" Then darkness closed down upon her intenser than ever, and endless, base debauchery began again.