Kostovsky found himself suddenly in a dirty dramshop, where his steps had almost unconsciously led him. He had not drunk for a long time, but now he felt a terrible necessity for the dramshop, the noise, the clinking of the glasses, and the smell of bad vodka. He sat in a corner of the dramshop, alone, at a small table. Before him stood a large bottle of vodka and the noxious side-dishes peculiar to such resorts. The dirty table-cloth was stained with vodka and beer, and the kerosene hanging-lamp dimly lighted the room, filled with tipsy people. They were all bawling, drinking, and clinking their glasses; the pale-faced waiters ran around, serving the drinks, and in the adjoining room cracked the billiard-balls, and some one of the players, whenever he hit the ball, sang out in a merry tenor voice a popular song: “Wherever I go, or stroll, I see only Ju-li-a, only Ju-li-a.” “Oh, the devil!” muttered Kostovsky, pouring out the tenth glass, and gloomily draining it. He was irritated because even here in the dramshop “she” was persecuting him. He had decided to “forget” her for evermore: he hated and despised her, and did not wish to remember her at all. The dramshop enveloped him in its sounds and smells, and eased his suffering with its well-known coloring of something intimate, free, something he had lived through in the past. But, little by little, his thoughts withdrew from the dramshop, and “she” appeared once more, and would no longer leave him. She was now in the costume of a “mermaid,” with the body of a fish covered with silver scales, radiant under the many colored rays of the reflector, seductively beautiful. She lured him after her with her enticing smile, and swam away far, far into the boundless sea. And the man in love with a mermaid felt that he was perishing, that he would never more return to his former carelessness, power, and strength of soul. And he recollected his former life before he knew the mermaid and her kisses. True, he had caroused then, but that was not drunkenness, it was dare-deviltry, his power was seeking a free outlet. His heart was athirst for dash and merriment. So, like the legendary fisherman, he had found in his net a mermaid. He lifted her in his arms, kissed and caressed her, and--good-by to carefree life! The man was ruined by the mermaid! “Oh, devil!” Kostovsky roared, draining his glass, and thinking thereby to drive off the troublesome thoughts; but “she” continued to torture him pitilessly, appearing before him every moment in another costume, now as a fairy, a shepherdess, and again as a mermaid, or she swam close to him in a wide house-gown, and her thick, black curls fell over her forehead and upon her full, pink cheeks. And her whole figure was as if flooded by radiant, poetic rays.