of a conversation, exclaiming in a gush of delight, "You darling!"

The house in which she had lived from her birth upwards, and which
was left her in her father's will, was at the extreme end of the
town, not far from the Tivoli. In the evenings and at night she
could head the band playing, and the crackling and banging of
fireworks, and it seemed to her that it was Kukin struggling with
his destiny, storming the entrenchments of his chief foe, the
indifferent public; there was a sweet thrill at her heart, she had
no desire to sleep, and when he returned home at day-break, she
tapped softly at her bedroom window, and showing him only her face
and one shoulder through the curtain, she gave him a friendly
smile. . . .

He proposed to her, and they were married. And when he had a closer
view of her neck and her plump, fine shoulders, he threw up his
hands, and said:

"You darling!"

He was happy, but as it rained on the day and night of his wedding,
his face still retained an expression of despair.

They got on very well together. She used to sit in his office, to
look after things in the Tivoli, to put down the accounts and pay
the wages. And her rosy cheeks, her sweet, naïve, radiant smile,
were to be seen now at the office window, now in the refreshment
bar or behind the scenes of the theatre. And already she used to
say to her acquaintances that the theatre was the chief and most
important thing in life and that it was only through the drama that