But the chance, brief, sincere love had given her the strength to
oppose the inevitability of a second fall. In her heroic courage
she even went so far as putting in a few notices in the
newspapers, that she was seeking a place with "all found."
However, she had no recommendation of any sort. In addition, she
had to do exclusively with women when it came to the hiring; and
they also, with some sort of an inner, infallible instinct,
surmised in her their ancient foe--the seductress of their
husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons.
There was neither sense nor use in. going home. Her native
Vassilkovsky district is distant only fifteen versts from the
state capital; and the rumour that she had entered that sort of an
establishment had long since penetrated, by means of her fellow-
villagers, into the village. This was written of in letters, and
transmitted verbally, by those village neighbours who had seen her
both on the street and at Anna Markovna's place itself--porters
and bell-hops of hotels, waiters at small restaurants, cabbies,
small contractors.
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