May, and it's kept it up all May and June. It's simply awful! The
public doesn't come, but I've to pay the rent just the same, and
pay the artists."

The next evening the clouds would gather again, and Kukin would say
with an hysterical laugh:

"Well, rain away, then! Flood the garden, drown me! Damn my luck
in this world and the next! Let the artists have me up! Send me to
prison!--to Siberia!--the scaffold! Ha, ha, ha!"

And next day the same thing.

Olenka listened to Kukin with silent gravity, and sometimes tears
came into her eyes. In the end his misfortunes touched her; she
grew to love him. He was a small thin man, with a yellow face, and
curls combed forward on his forehead. He spoke in a thin tenor; as
he talked his mouth worked on one side, and there was always an
expression of despair on his face; yet he aroused a deep and genuine
affection in her. She was always fond of some one, and could not
exist without loving. In earlier days she had loved her papa, who
now sat in a darkened room, breathing with difficulty; she had loved
her aunt who used to come every other year from Bryansk; and before
that, when she was at school, she had loved her French master. She
was a gentle, soft-hearted, compassionate girl, with mild, tender
eyes and very good health. At the sight of her full rosy cheeks,
her soft white neck with a little dark mole on it, and the kind,
naïve smile, which came into her face when she listened to anything
pleasant, men thought, "Yes, not half bad," and smiled too, while
lady visitors could not refrain from seizing her hand in the middle