"He good ... good. And you ... bad! You are bad! The gentleman is a good soul, very good, and you are a beast, you are bad! The gentleman is alive and you are dead.... God made man that he should be alive, that he should have happiness, sorrow, grief, and you want nothing, so you are not alive, but a stone! A stone wants nothing and so do you.... You are a stone--and God does not love you and the gentleman he does." They all began to laugh: the Tartar furiously knit his brows, waved his hand, drew his rags round him and went to the fire. The ferrymen and Simeon went slowly to the hut. "It's cold," said one of the ferrymen hoarsely, as he stretched himself on the straw with which the damp, clay floor was covered. "Yes. It's not warm," another agreed.... "It's a hard life." All of them lay down. The wind blew the door open. The snow drifted into the hut. Nobody could bring himself to get up and shut the door; it was cold, but they put up with it. "And I am happy," muttered Simeon as he fell asleep. "God give such a life to everybody." "You certainly are the devil's own. Even the devil don't need to take you." Sounds like the barking of a dog came from outside. "Who is that? Who is there?" "It's the Tartar crying." "Oh! he's a queer fish." "He'll get used to it!" said Simeon, and at once he fell asleep. Soon the others slept too and the door was left open. THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG It was reported that a new face had been seen on the quay; a lady with a little dog. Dimitri Dimitrich Gomov, who had been a fortnight at Talta and had got used to it, had begun to show an interest in new faces. As he sat in the pavilion at Verne's he saw a young lady, blond and fairly tall, and wearing a broad-brimmed hat, pass along the quay. After her ran a white Pomeranian. Later he saw her in the park and in the square several times a day. She walked by herself, always in the same broad-brimmed hat, and with this white dog. Nobody knew who she was, and she was spoken of as the lady with the toy dog. "If," thought Gomov, "if she is here without a husband or a friend, it would be as well to make her acquaintance." He was not yet forty, but he had a daughter of twelve and two boys at school. He had married young, in his second year at the University, and now his wife seemed half as old again as himself. She was a tall woman, with dark eyebrows, erect, grave, stolid, and she thought herself an intellectual woman. She read a great deal, called her husband not Dimitri, but Demitri, and in his private mind he thought her short-witted, narrow-minded, and ungracious. He was afraid of her and disliked being at home. He had begun to betray her with other women long ago, betrayed her frequently, and, probably for that reason nearly always spoke ill of women, and when they were discussed in his presence he would maintain that they were an inferior race.