ive me," he murmured; and he began to sob like a child,
kissing her face and hands, and wetting them with his tears.

In his pity for her he understood himself. And when he saw himself as he
was, he realised how he had wronged her, how guilty he had been in his
pride, in his coldness, even in his anger towards her. He was glad that
it was he who was guilty, and that he had nothing to forgive, but that
he himself needed forgiveness. She took him to her tiny room, and told
him how she lived; but she did not show him the child, nor did she
mention the past, knowing how painful it would be to him.

He told her that she must live differently.

"Yes; if I could only live in the country," said she.

"We will talk it over," he said. Suddenly the child began to wail and
to scream. She opened her eyes very wide; and, not taking them from her
father's face, remained hesitating and motionless.

"Well--I suppose you must feed him," said Michael Ivanovich, and frowned
with the obvious effort.

She got up, and suddenly the wild idea seized her to show him whom she
loved so deeply the thing she now loved best of all in the world. But
first she looked at her father's face. Would he be angry or not? His
face revealed no anger, only suffering.

"Yes, go, go," said he; "God bless you. Yes. I'll come again to-morrow,
and we will decide. Good-bye, my darling--good-bye." Again he found it
hard to swallow the lump in his throat.

When Michael Ivanovich returned to his brother's house, Alexandra
Dmitrievna immediately rushed to him.

"Well?"

"Well? Nothing."

"Have you seen?" she asked, guessing from his expression that something
had happened.

"Yes," he answered shortly, and began to cry. "I'm getting old and
stupid," said he, mastering his emotion.

"No; you are growing wise--very wise."

THERE ARE NO GUILTY PEOPLE

I

MINE is a strange and wonderful lot! The chances are that there is not a
single wretched beggar suffering under the luxury and oppression of the
rich who feels anything like as keenly as I do either the injustice,
the cruelty, and the horror of their oppression of and contempt for
the poor; or the grinding humiliation and misery which befall the great
majority of the workers, the real producers of all that makes life
possible. I have felt this for a long time, and as the years have
passed by the feeling has grown and grown, until recently it reached its
climax. Although I feel all this so vividly,