“What shall I do?” she murmured. “If I can’t get nine hundred roubles he will be ruined as well as the children and myself. Shall I kill this creature, or shall I go down on my knees to her?”
The lady pressed her handkerchief to her eyes and burst into tears.
“Oh, I beseech you!” she sobbed. “It is you who have disgraced and ruined my husband; now save him! You can have no pity for him, I know; but the children, remember the children! What have they done to deserve this?”
Pasha imagined his little children standing on the street corner weeping with hunger, and she, too, burst into tears.
“What can I do, my lady?” she cried. “You say I am a wicked creature who has ruined your husband, but I swear to you before God I have never had the least benefit from him! Mota is the only girl in our chorus who has a rich friend, the rest of us all live on bread and water. Your husband is an educated, pleasant gentleman, that’s why I received him. We can’t pick and choose.”
“I want the jewellery; give me the jewellery! I am weeping, I am humiliating myself; see, I shall fall on my knees before you!”
Pasha screamed with terror and waved her arms. She felt that this pale, beautiful lady, who spoke the same refined language that people did in plays, might really fall on her knees before her, and for the very reason that she was so proud and high-bred, she would exalt herself by doing this, and degrade the little singer.
“Yes, yes, I’ll give you the jewellery!” Pasha cried hastily, wiping her eyes. “Take it, but it did not come from your husband! I got it from other visitors. But take it, if you want it!”
Pasha pulled out an upper drawer of the bureau, and took from it a diamond brooch, a string of corals, two or three rings, and a bracelet. These she handed to the lady.
“Here is the jewellery, but I tell you again your husband never gave me a thing. Take it, and may you be the richer for having it!” Pasha went on, offended by the lady’s threat that she would go down on her knees. “You are a lady and his lawful wife—keep him at home then! The idea of it! As if I had asked him to come here! He came because he wanted to!”