soul. She listened,
prettily eager, sweetly compassionate of the sorrows of the peasantry
whom he made the object of his simple pity. Her gray eyes contracted
with horror when he told her of the misery with which he was too
familiar. Her pretty lips quivered when he told her of little children
born only to starve because their mothers were starving. She laid her
gloved fingers gently on his when he recounted tales of strong men--good
fathers in their simple, barbarous way--who were well content that the
children should die rather than be saved to pass a miserable existence,
without joy, without hope.

She lifted her eyes with admiration to his face when he told her what he
hoped to do, what he dreamed of accomplishing. She even made a few
eager, heartfelt suggestions, fitly coming from a woman--touched with a
woman's tenderness, lightened by a woman's sympathy and knowledge.

It was in its way a tragedy, the picture we are called to look
upon--these newly made lovers, not talking of themselves, as is the
time-honored habit of such. Surrounded by every luxury, both high-born,
refined, and wealthy; both educated, both intelligent. He,
simple-minded, earnest, quite absorbed in his happiness, because that
happiness seemed to fall in so easily with the busier, and, as some
might say, the nobler side of his ambition. She, failing to understand
his aspirations, thinking only of his wealth.

"But," she said at length, "shall you--we--be allowed to do all this? I
thought that such schemes were not encouraged in Russia. It is such a
pity to pauperize the people."

"You cannot pauperize a man who has absolutely nothing," replied Paul.
"Of course, we shall have difficulties; but, together, I think we shall
be able to overcome them."

Etta smiled sympathetically, and the smile finished up, as it were, with
a gleam very like amusement. She had been vouchsafed for a moment a
vision of herself in some squalid Russian village, in a hideous
Russian-made tweed dress, dispensing the necessaries of life to a people
only little raised above the beasts of the field. The vision made her
smile, as well it might. In Petersburg life might be tolerable for a
little in the height of the season--for a few weeks of the brilliant
Northern winter--but in no other part of Russia could she dream of
dwelling.

They sat and talked of their future as lovers will, knowing as little of
it as any of us, building up castles in the air, such edifices as w