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"We must look in the water-closet ... Perhaps she's there?" surmised Zoe. But this institution was locked from the inside with a bolt. Emma Edwardovna knocked on the door with her fist. "Jennie, do come out at last! What foolishness is this?" And, raising her voice, she cried out impatiently and threateningly: "Do you hear, you swine? ... Come out this minute the doctor's waiting!"
On the next day, on Monday, toward ten o'clock in the morning, almost all the inmates of the house formerly Madam Shaibes', but now Emma Edwardovna Titzner's rode off in cabs to the centre of the city, to the anatomical theatre all, except the far-sighted, much-experienced Henrietta; the cowardly and insensible Ninka; and the feeble-minded Pashka, who for two days now had not gotten up from her bed, kept silent, and to questions directed at her answered by a beatific, idiotical smile and with some sort of inarticulate animal lowing.
Even before, she had had such periods of a detriment of consciousness; however, they had not lasted long, and Emma Edwardovna in any case determined to tide it over: Pashka was a veritable treasure for the establishment, and its truly horrible victim. The anatomical theatre represented a long, one-storied, dark-gray building, with white frames around the windows and doors.
"But this is a vixen, a spider in human shape this dressmaker of yours!" yelled Lichonin beside himself. "Why, she's in a conspiracy with you, cupping glass that you are, you abominable tortoise! Scuttlefish! Where's your conscience?" The more agitated he grew, the more calm and jeering Emma Edwardovna became. "Again I repeat: that is not my business.
What indecency!" the indignant voice of Emma Edwardovna sounds in the room. "Well, where did you see that respectable girls should allow themselves to climb out of the windows and holler all over the street. O, scandal! And it's all Niura, and it's always this horrible Niura!"
And at last into the drawing room walked Emma Edwardovna herself. She was more majestic than she had ever been clad in a black silk gown, from which, just like battlements, her enormous breasts jutted out, upon which descended two fat chins; in black silk mittens; with an enormous gold chain wound thrice around her neck, and terminating in a ponderous medallion hanging upon the very abdomen.
By that time romantic follies will go out of your head entirely, and it will not be you who will be chosen already, but you who will be choosing with sense and with feeling, as a connoisseur picks out precious stones. Do you agree with me?" Tamara cast down her eyes, and smiled just the least trifle. "You speak golden truths, Emma Edwardovna. I will drop mine, but not at once.
But, having freed herself, finally, from the proprietress, she asked in Russian: "You see, Emma Edwardovna, that I agree in everything with you, but for that I beg you to fulfill one request of mine. It will not cost you anything. Namely, I hope that you will allow me and the other girls to escort the late Jennie to the cemetery." Emma Edwardovna made a wry face.
I did not want to interfere, when you were reading the letter; but then you turned around to me I stretched the revolver out to you and wanted to say: 'See, Emma Edwardovna, what I found' for, don't you see, it surprised me awfully how the late Jennie, having a revolver at her disposal, preferred such a horrible death as hanging? And that's all."
Following her Zoe, Henrietta, Vanda and others stepped up also. Tamara alone continued to stand near the wall with her back to the mirror; that mirror into which Jennka so loved to gaze, in gone-by times, admiring herself as she walked back and forth through the drawing room. Emma Edwardovna let the imperious, obstinate gaze of a boa-constrictor rest upon her; but the hypnosis did not work.
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