Several times during the day, when Maslova remained alone, she drew out a corner of the picture and looked at it with admiration, but in the evening, when she and another nurse retired for the night, she removed the picture from the envelope and immovably looked with admiration at the faces; her own, his and the aunt's, their dresses, the stairs of the balcony, the bushes in the background, her eyes feasting especially on herself, her young, beautiful face with the hair hanging over her forehead. She was so absorbed that she failed to notice that the other nurse had entered. "What is that? Did he give it you?" asked the stout, good-natured nurse, leaning over the photograph. "Is it possible that that is you?" "Who else?" Maslova said, smiling and looking into her companion's face. "And who is that? He himself? And that is his mother?" "His aunt. Couldn't you recognize me?" asked Maslova. "Why, no. I could never recognize you. The face is entirely different. That must have been taken about ten years ago." "Not years, but a lifetime," said Maslova, and suddenly her face became sullen and a wrinkle formed between her eyebrows. "Yours was an easy life, wasn't it?" "Yes, easy," Maslova repeated, closing her eyes and shaking her head. "Worse than penal servitude." "Why so?" "Because. From eight in the evening to four in the morning--every day the same." "Then why don't they get out?" "They like to, but cannot. But what is the use of talking!" cried Maslova, and she sprang to her feet, threw the photograph into the drawer of the table, and suppressing her angry tears, ran into the corridor, slamming the door. Looking on the photograph she imagined herself as she had been at the time the photograph was made, and dreamed how happy she had been and might still be with him. The words of her companion reminded her what she was now--reminded her of all the horror of that life which she then felt but confusedly, and would not allow herself to admit. Only now she vividly recalled all those terrible nights, particularly one Shrovetide night. She recalled how she, in a low-cut, wine-bespattered, red silk dress, with a red bow in her dishevelled hair, weak, jaded and tipsy, after dancing attendance upon the guest, had seated herself, at two in the morning, near the thin, bony, pimpled girl-pianist and complained of her hard life. The girl said that her life was also disagreeable to her, and that she wished to change her occupation. Afterward their friend Clara joined them, and all three suddenly decided to change their life. They were about to leave the place when the drunken guests became noisy, the fiddler struck up a lively song of the first figure of a Russian quadrille, the pianist began to thump in unison, a little drunken man in a white necktie and dress coat caught her up. Another man, stout and bearded, and also in a dress coat, seized Clara, and for a long time they whirled, danced, shouted and drank. Thus a year passed, a