![]() She would have been glad now if the porter had said "No," but the latter, instead of answering ushered her into the hall, and helped her off with her coat. She heard steps coming: it was the porter. "And how can I go up to him in such a dress, looking like a beggar or some working girl?" "Perhaps he has forgotten me by now," she thought, hardly daring to pull the bell. ![]() She was bold and saucy enough at drinking parties, but now, dressed in everyday clothes, feeling herself in the position of an ordinary person asking a favour, who might be refused admittance, she felt suddenly timid and humiliated. Vanda began suddenly feeling frightened and nervous, which was not at all her way. But as she touched the bell, this plan seemed to vanish from her mind of itself. "If he doesn't, I'll smash all the lamps in the house."īefore she reached the dentist's door she thought out her plan of action: she would run laughing up the stairs, dash into the dentist's room and demand twenty-five roubles. "He'll be sure to give it me, if only I find him at home," she thought, as she walked in his direction. ![]() She was awfully pleased at the thought of Finkel. Vanda remembered a dentist, called Finkel, a converted Jew, who six months ago had given her a bracelet, and on whose head she had once emptied a glass of beer at the supper at the German Club. The old chap with the red hair will be at his office at this time." "Misha is out of the question he's a married man. What was she to do?Īfter long hesitation, when she was sick of walking and sitting and thinking, Vanda made up her mind to fall back on her last resource: to go straight to the lodgings of some gentleman friend and ask for money. It would be easy enough to meet them in the evening at the "Renaissance," but they wouldn't let her in at the "Renaissance "in that shabby dress and with no hat. There isn't one who would refuse me, I know."īut no gentleman she knew came her way. "If only I could meet a gentleman friend," she thought to herself, "I could get some money. And clothes were all she thought about: the question what she should eat and where she should sleep did not trouble her in the least. She felt as though the very horses and dogs were staring and laughing at the plainness of her dress. but what can you get for a rouble? You can't buy for that sum a fashionable short jacket, nor a big hat, nor a pair of bronze shoes, and without those things she had a feeling of being, as it were, undressed. The first thing she did was to visit a pawn-broker's and pawn her turquoise ring, her one piece of jewellery. THE charming Vanda, or, as she was described in her passport, the "Honourable Citizen Nastasya Kanavkin," found herself, on leaving the hospital, in a position she had never been in before: without a home to go to or a farthing in her pocket.
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