Treading softly, like a cat, Nadezhda darted away towards the steps; whereas I, less fortunate, was caught by the departing Gubin in the very act of leaving the neighbourhood of the window. Upon that he inflated his cheeks, ruffled up his sandy hair, turned red in the face like a man who has been through a fight, and cried in strange, querulous, high-pitched accents: "Hi! What were you doing just now? Long-legged devil that you are, I have no further use for you--I do not intend to work with you any more. So you can go." At the same moment the dim face, with its great blue eyes, showed itself at the window, and the stem voice inquired: "What does the noise mean?" "What does it mean? It means that I do not intend--" "You must not, if you wish to create a disturbance, do it anywhere but in the street. It must not be created here." "What is all this?" Nadezhda put in with a stamp of her foot. "What--" At this point, the cook rushed out with a toasting-fork and militantly ranged herself by Nadezhda's side, exclaiming: "See what comes of not having a single muzhik in the house!" I now prepared to withdraw, but, in doing so, glanced once more at the features of the elderly lady, and saw that the blue pupils were dilated so as almost to fill the eyes in their entirety, and to leave only a bluish margin. And strange and painful were those eyes--eyes fixed blindly, eyes which seemed to have strayed from their orbits through yielding to emotion and a consequent overstrain--while the apple of the throat had swelled like the crop of a bird, and the sheen of the silken head-dress become as the sheen of metal. Involuntarily, I thought to myself: "It is a head that must be made of iron." By this time Gubin had penitently subsided, and was exchanging harmless remarks with the cook, while carefully avoiding my glance. "Good day to you, madame," at length I said as I passed the window. Not at once did she reply, but when she did so she said kindly: "And good day to YOU, my friend. Yes, I wish you good day." To which she added an inclination of the head which resembled nothing so much as a hammer which much percussion upon an anvil has wrought to a fine polish. NILUSHKA