The Orloffs had been married three years. They had had a child, which died at the age of a year and a half. Neither of them grieved over it much, for they consoled themselves with the thought that they would soon get another one. The cellar in which they lived was a great long, dusty room with a cobwebby ceiling. Close against the door stood, with its front towards the window, a huge Russian oven; between it and the wall a narrow passage led into a square room which obtained its light from two of the windows that looked on to the courtyard. Through these windows the light fell in two dim streaks into the cellar, which was damp, clammy, and death-like in its stillness.... Life flowed by somewhere, far, far away out there and above; here, in this hole only vague, dull sounds found an entrance, and blending with the dust of th? court, pressed in on the senses of the Orloffs in formless and colourless waves. Opposite the stove stood, behind a brown curtain with a pattern of roses, a great wooden double bedstead; over against the bed, and near the other wall stood a table, at which the Orloffs drank their tea and ate their dinner, and between the bed and the opposite wall, in a sort of frame formed by two rays of light, the couple sat and worked. Blackbeetles wandered about, nibbling the paste with which old newspapers had been stuck against the walls. Flies hovered over everything, buzzing in a melancholy drone; and the pictures, which were decorated with the spots they left, looked against the dirty green background of the walls like dark blotches.