st be tired."

"I am never tired," he answered, and they began to walk away in the
direction whence they had come.

For a long time neither spoke. At last Schmidt broke the silence.

"Vjera," he said, "I have been thinking about it all and I do not
understand it. What kind of love is it that makes you act as you do?"

Vjera stood still, for they were close to her door, and there was a street
lamp at hand so that she could see his face. She saw that he asked the
question earnestly.

"It is something that I cannot explain--it is something holy," she
answered.

Perhaps the forlorn little shell-maker had found the definition of true
love.

She let herself in with her key and Schmidt once more found himself alone
in the street. If he had followed his natural instinct he would have
loitered about in one of the public squares until morning, making up for
the loss of his night's rest by sleeping in the daytime. But he had taken
upon himself the responsibilities of marriage as they are regarded west of
the Dnieper, and his union had been blessed by the subsequent appearance
of a number of olive-branches. It was therefore necessary that he should
sleep at night in order to work by day, and he reluctantly turned his
footsteps towards home. As he walked, he thought of all that had happened
since five o'clock in the afternoon, and of all that he had learned in the
course of the night. Vjera's story interested him and touched him, and her
acts seemed to remind him of something which he nevertheless could not
quite remember. Far down in his toughened nature the strings of a
forgotten poetry vibrated softly as though they would make music if they
dared. Far back in the chain of memories, the memory once best loved was
almost awake once more, the link of once clasped hands was almost alive
again, the tender pressure of fingers now perhaps long dead was again
almost a reality able to thrill body and soul. And with all that, and with
the certainty that those things were gone for ever, arose the great
longing for one more breath of liberty, for one more ride over the
boundless steppe, for one more draught of the sour kvass, of the camp brew
of rye and malt.

The longing for such things, for one thing almost unattainable, is in man
and beast at certain times. In the distant northern plains, a hundred
miles from the sea, in the midst of the Laplander's village, a young
reindeer raises his broad muzzle to the north wind, and stares a