e were continual
mournful sounds and it was impossible to tell whether it was a shutter
creaking on its rusty hinges or the cranes flying--and one felt so well
and so full of the desire for life!

"Summer has passed...." said Masha. "Now we can both make up our
accounts. We have worked hard and thought a great deal and we are the
better for it--all honour and praise to us; we have improved ourselves;
but have our successes had any perceptible influence on the life around
us, have they been of any use to a single person? No! Ignorance, dirt,
drunkenness, a terribly high rate of infant mortality--everything is
just as it was, and no one is any the better for your having ploughed
and sown and my having spent money and read books. Evidently we have
only worked and broadened our minds for ourselves."

I was abashed by such arguments and did not know what to think.

"From beginning to end we have been sincere," I said, "and if a man is
sincere, he is right."

"Who denies that? We have been right but we have been wrong in our way
of setting about it. First of all, are not our very ways of living
wrong? You want to be useful to people, but by the mere fact of buying
an estate you make it impossible to be so. Further, if you work, dress,
and eat like a peasant you lend your authority and approval to the
clumsy clothes, and their dreadful houses and their dirty beards.... On
the other hand, suppose you work for a long, long time, all you life,
and in the end obtain some practical results--what will your results
amount to, what can they do against such elemental forces as wholesale
ignorance, hunger, cold, and degeneracy? A drop in the ocean! Other
methods of fighting are necessary, strong, bold, quick! If you want to
be useful then you must leave the narrow circle of common activity and
try to act directly on the masses! First of all, you need vigorous,
noisy, propaganda. Why are art and music, for instance, so much alive
and so popular and so powerful? Because the musician or the singer
influences thousands directly. Art, wonderful art!" She looked wistfully
at the sky and went on: "Art gives wings and carries you far, far away.
If you are bored with dirt and pettifogging interests, if you are
exasperated and outraged and indignant, rest and satisfaction are only
to be found in beauty."

As we approached Kurilovka the weather was fine, clear, and joyous. In
the yards the peasants were thrashing and there was a smell of corn