Jennie puts the tattered novel down on her stomach, throws the
cigarette over Zoe's head, and says mockingly:

"We know all about your quiet life. You chucked the infants into
toilets. The Evil One is always snooping around your holy places."

"I call forty. I had forty-six. Finished!" Little Manka exclaims
excitedly and claps her palms. "I open with three."

Tamara, smiling at Jennie's words, answers with a scarcely
perceptible smile, which barely distends her lips, but makes
little, sly, ambiguous depressions at their corners, altogether as
with Monna Lisa in the portrait by Leonardo da Vinci.

"Lay folk say a lot of things about nuns ... Well, even if there
had been sin once in a while ..."

"If you don't sin--you don't repent," Zoe puts in seriously, and
wets her finger in her mouth.

"You sit and sew, the gold eddies before your eyes, while from
standing in the morning at prayer your back just aches, and your
legs ache. And at evening there is service again. You knock at the
door of the mother superior's cell: 'Through prayers of Thy
saints, oh Lord, our Father, have mercy upon us.' And the mother
superior would answer from the cell, in a little bass-like 'A-men.'"

Jennie looks at her intently for some time, shakes her head and
says with great significance: