Red love

Vassilissa was a working-girl twenty-eight years old, a knitter by trade. Thin, anemic, a typical child of the city. Her hair, cut short after typhus, grew in curls. From a dist...

Spring was peeping through the window of Vassilissa's attic, high up under the roof. The warm sun peeped in, and the spring sky, with its fleecy clouds, white, delicate, melting...

Vasya was sitting in the car, her head pillowed on her woolen shawl. She was not sleeping, but she saw the past as in a dream, as in a moving picture: reel after reel, scene aft...

The compartment was dark. The Nep-girl had gone to bed, after perfuming the entire car with Eau de Cologne. Vassilissa was lying quietly in her upper berth. If only she could fa...

"Vasya, my wife, my beloved comrade. I don't care about the case against me now. Let them ruin me. Only one thought torments me, maddens me--that I might lose you. I can't live...

The train was to arrive in the morning. And Vassilissa was up with the first pale light of dawn. She had to collect her things, and dress, to please her beloved Volodya. They ha...

He sat down beside her, and inquired how she felt. He looked into her eyes as he spoke, and his grave, sad gaze puzzled Vasya. His eyes seemed to bespeak suffering.

He listened to Vasya's report, walking up and down the room and smoking. His face was worried. "You say they're accusing me of keeping up two households. And suppose I had five...

At last Vasya had carried her point at the hemp-binding works. She had succeeded in obtaining concessions from the management. The shop girls were jubilant, escorted Vasya to he...

Lisa had hardly left for work in the morning when the door opened and Marya Semyonovna appeared, a black lace shawl wrapped about her head. She was gasping for breath. It was ho...

Vladimir had returned to his work for the first time, had gone to the office. Vasya was rejoicing in her freedom. In the morning she rushed to the Party Committee, and thence to...

The Park. Dusty, withered by the oppressive heat of the summer. The long and anxiously awaited rain did not come; it would have washed the dust of the city from the trees, would...

Vladimir had come home earlier than usual. He was smiling with delight, for he had good news: the long-expected summons of the Central Administration, his appointment to the new...

Vasya was standing before the locked door of her former attic, where Grusha was living now. She knocked. Downstairs they had told her that Grusha had come home from work. But th...