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 the manager. "You always seem to want leave at the most awkward moment. You can go if it's really necessary, but don't forget that your work must be made up."

A few minutes later Nadezhda Alexevna got into a tram-car and began her twenty minutes' journey. She felt depressed and uncertain. Spasms of keen pity for her sister and regret for the dead boy caught at her heart.

It was terrible to think that this fifteen-year-old child, but lately a light-hearted schoolboy, should have suddenly shot himself—painful to imagine the mother's grief. How she would weep—her life seemed always to have been unhappy and unsuccessful.

Yet Nadezhda Alexevna could not give herself up entirely to such thoughts. Her mind was dwelling on something else. It was always so with her when she came to one of those times common enough in this life of unexpected happenings—the interruption of the ordinary daily routine by some unpleasant occurrence. There was an event in the background of her own life which weighed her down with a continuous and