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She, too, gazed at my sketches with enthusiasm, and with the same openness and readiness to chatter as Misuce, she told me what had happened, and confided to me her domestic secrets. She had a perfect reverence for her elder daughter.

In the windows of the top storey where Misuce slept there appeared a bright light, which changed to a soft green they had covered the lamp with the shade.

"Oh, for the sake of a girl like that one might not only go into the Zemstvo, but even wear out iron shoes, like the girl in the fairy tale. And Misuce? What a sweet creature she is, that Misuce!" Byelokurov, drawling out "Er er," began a long-winded disquisition on the malady of the age pessimism. He talked confidently, in a tone that suggested that I was opposing him.

Meanwhile her sister Misuce had no cares, and spent her life in complete idleness just as I did. When she got up in the morning she immediately took up a book and sat down to read on the terrace in a deep arm-chair, with her feet hardly touching the ground, or hid herself with her book in the lime avenue, or walked out into the fields.

And still more rarely, at moments when I am sad and depressed by loneliness, I have dim memories, and little by little I begin to feel that she is thinking of me, too that she is waiting for me, and that we shall meet. . . . Misuce, where are you?

She took no part in serious conversation. She was not looked upon as quite grown up by her family, and, like a child, was always called by the nickname of Misuce, because that was what she had called her English governess when she was a child.

After the huge empty room with columns, I felt, as it were, at home in this small snug house where there were no oleographs on the walls and where the servants were spoken to with civility. And everything seemed to me young and pure, thanks to the presence of Lida and Misuce, and there was an atmosphere of refinement over everything.

"Misuce, go out of the room!" said Lida to her sister, apparently thinking my words pernicious to the young girl. Genya looked mournfully at her mother and sister, and went out of the room. "These are the charming things people say when they want to justify their indifference," said Lida. "It is easier to disapprove of schools and hospitals, than to teach or heal."