ue, from the inside,
now one cheek, now the other. Soloviev did not thwart her, and followed
after, along those ways which her instinct laid down. And it must be
said, that during this month and a half he had managed to become
attached with all his huge, broad, mighty soul to this chance, weak,
transitory being. This was the circumspect, droll, magnanimous,
somewhat wondering love, and the careful concern, of a kind elephant
for a frail, helpless, yellow-downed chick.

The reading was a delectation for both of them, and here again the
choice of works was directed by the taste of Liubka, while Soloviev
only followed its current and its sinuosities. Thus, for example,
Liubka did not overcome Don Quixote, tired, and, finally, turning away
from him, with pleasure heard Robinson Crusoe through, and wept with
especial copiousness over the scene of his meeting with his relatives.
She liked Dickens, and very easily grasped his radiant humour; but the
features of English manners were foreign to her and incomprehensible.
They also read Chekhov more than once, and Liubka very freely, without
difficulty, penetrated the beauty of his design, his smile and his
sadness. Stories for children moved her, touched her to such a degree
that it was laughable and joyous to look at her. Once Soloviev read to
her Chekhov's story, The Fit, in which, as it is known, a student for
the first time finds himself in a brothel; and afterwards, on the next
day, writhes about, as in a fit, in the spasms of a keen psychic
suffering and the consciousness of common guilt. Soloviev himself did
not expect that tremendous impression which this narrative would make
upon her. She cried, swore, wrung her hands, and exclaimed all the
while:

"Lord! Where does he take all that stuff from, and so skillfully! Why,
it's every bit just the way it is with us!"

Once he brought with him a book entitled THE HISTORY OF MANON LESCAUT
AND THE CHEVALIER DE GRIEUX, the work of Abbe Prevost. It must be said
that Soloviev himself was reading this remarkable book for the first
time. But still, Liubka appraised it far more deeply and finely. The
absence of a plot, the naiveness of the telling, the surplus of
sentimentality, the olden fashion of the style--all this taken together
cooled Soloviev; whereas Liubka received the joyous, sad, touching and
flippant details of this quaint immortal novel not only through her
ears, but as though with her eyes and with all her naively open