"Do I know?"
Then she asked some one with gilt buttons, but not in a frock-coat, and with holes in his elbows. He would not even listen, he merely answered,—
"I've no time!"
Again the woman went into the first door that she came to; she did not see, poor thing, that there was a notice, "Persons not belonging to the service are forbidden to enter." She did not belong to the service; the notice she did not see, as is said.
The moment she entered she saw an empty room, under the window a bench, on the bench some one sitting and dozing. Farther on a door to another room, in which she saw men walking, they were in frock-coats and in uniforms.
She approached the man who was dozing on the bench; she had some courage in his presence, for he seemed a peasant, and on the feet stretched out in front of him were boots with holes in them. She pushed his arm.
He woke, looked at her, and then shouted,—
"It is forbidden!"
The poor woman took to her legs, and he slammed the door behind her.
She found herself for the third time in the corridor. She sat down near some door, and, with a patience truly peasant-like, determined to sit there even to the end of time. "And, besides, some one may ask," thought she. She did not cry; she just rubbed her eyes, for they were itching, and she felt that the whole corridor, with all its doors, was beginning to whirl around her.