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Exclamations! “Oh, how fine! on the twenty-fifth of January is my wedding,” says the same beautiful Katia.

“I congratulate you. I did not know whom to visit first,” said I, “you or Sasha.”

“Sasha is in Moscow,” says Katia with a troubled expression.

“Will you live in Kief?” I ask.

“I in Kief,” says she with meaning emphasis.

So it is not Sasha that she is marrying.

Presently in comes a bright-looking soldier of rather charming manners, and he is introduced as the bridegroom. He is a guest in the house and has been living there some weeks—Fedor Leonidovitch Smirnoff—who has completed his university course in law, and is now serving his term in the army.

“The date is absolutely settled?” I suppose.

“If papa will take out the papers in time,” says Katia.

But the new young man is on good terms with the father. He has evidently plenty of money of his own, and he is a persona grata.

“What of Sasha?” I ask Katia aside.

“We quarrelled,” says she. “God, how we quarrelled! We were rowing in a boat on the Dnieper, and when I told him it was no good, we could never be married, he shot at me with a revolver. I had to save myself by jumping into the water.”