are having breakfast in the garden, all so charmingly dressed and gay, and one knows that all these healthy, well-fed, handsome people are going to do nothing the whole long day, one wishes that all life were like that. Now, too, I had the same thought, and walked about the garden prepared to walk about like that, aimless and unoccupied, the whole day, the whole summer.

Genya came out with a basket; she had a look in her face as though she knew she would find me in the garden, or had a presentiment of it. We gathered mushrooms and talked, and when she asked a question she walked a little ahead so as to see my face.

‘A miracle happened in the village yesterday,’ she said. ‘The lame woman Pelagea has been ill the whole year. No doctors or medicines did her any good; but yesterday an old woman came and whispered something over her, and her illness passed away.’

‘That’s nothing much,’ I said. ‘You mustn’t look for miracles only among sick people and old women. Isn’t health a miracle? And life itself? Whatever is beyond understanding is a miracle.’

‘And aren’t you afraid of what is beyond understanding?’

‘No. Phenomena I don’t understand I face boldly, and am not overwhelmed by them. I am above them. Man ought to recognize himself as superior to lions, tigers, stars, superior to everything in nature, even what seems miraculous and is beyond his understanding, or else he is not a man, but a mouse afraid of everything.’

Genya believed that as an artist I knew a very great deal, and could guess correctly what I did not know. She longed for me to initiate her into the domain of the Eternal and the Beautiful—into that higher world in which, as she imagined, I was quite at home. And she talked to me of God, of the eternal life, of the miraculous. And I, who could never admit that my self and my imagination would be lost for ever after death, answered: ‘Yes, men are immortal’; ‘Yes, there is eternal life in store for us.’ And she listened, believed, and did not ask for proofs.

As we were going home she stopped suddenly and said:

‘Our Lida is a remarkable person—isn’t she? I love her very dearly, and would be ready to give my life for her any minute. But tell me’—Genya touched my sleeve with her finger—‘tell me, why do you always argue with her? Why are you irritated?’

‘Because she is wrong.’

Genya shook her head and tears came into her eyes.

‘How incomprehensible that is!’ she said.

At that minute Lida had just returned from somewhere, and standing with a whip in her hand, a slim, beautiful figure in the sunlight, at the steps, she was giving some orders to one of the men. Talking loudly, she hurriedly received two or three sick villagers; then with a busy and anxious face she walked about the rooms, opening one cupboard after another, and went upstairs. It was a long time before they could find her and call her to dinner, and she came in when we had finished our soup. All these tiny details I remember with tenderness, and that whole day I remember vividly, though nothing special happened. After dinner Genya lay in a long arm-chair reading, while I sat upon the bottom step of the terrace. We were silent. The whole sky was overcast with clouds, and it began to spot with fine rain. It was hot; the wind had dropped, and it seemed as though the day would never end. Ekaterina Pavlovna came out on the terrace, looking drowsy and carrying a fan.

‘Oh, mother,’ said Genya, kissing her hand, ‘it’s not good for you to sleep in the day.’