self, not others."

Along the high road to Sukhum which lay behind us there were proceeding
some invisible travellers whose scraping of feet as they walked
proclaimed the fact that they were not over-used to journeying on foot.
Just as the party drew level with us, a musical voice hummed out softly
the line "Alone will I set forth upon the road," with the word "alone"
plaintively stressed. Next, a resonant bass voice said with a sort of
indolent incisiveness:

"Aphon or aphonia means loss of speech to the extent of, to the extent
of--oh, to WHAT extent, most learned Vera Vasilievna?"

"To the extent of total loss of power of articulation," replied a voice
feminine and youthful of timbre.

Just at that moment we saw two dark, blurred figures, with a paler
figure between them, come gliding into view.

"Strange indeed is it that, that--"

"That what?"

"That so many names proper to these parts should also be so suggestive.
Take, for instance, Mount Nakopioba. Certainly folk hereabouts seem to
have "amassed" things, and to have known how to do so." [The verb
nakopit means to amass, to heap up.]

"For my part, I always fail to remember the name of Simon the
Canaanite. Constantly I find myself calling him 'the Cainite.'"

"Look here," interrupted the musical voice in a tone of chastened
enthusiasm. "As I contemplate all this beauty, and inhale this
restfulness, I find myself reflecting: 'How would it be if I were to
let everything go to the devil, and take up my abode here for ever?'"

At this point all further speech became drowned by the sound of the
monastery's bell as it struck the hour. The only utterance that came
borne to my ears was the mournful fragment:

Oh, if into a single word
I could pour my inmost thoughts!

To the foregoing dialogue my companion had listened with his head
tilted to one side, much as though the dialogue had deflected it in
that direction: and now, as the voices died away into the distance, he
sighed, straightened himself, and said:

"Clearly those people were educated folk. And see too how, as they
talked of one thing and another, there cropped up the old and
ever-persistent point."

"To what point are you referring?"

My companion paused a moment before he replied. Then he said:

"Can it be that you did not hear it? Did you not hear one of those
people remark: 'I have a mind to surrender everything '?"

Whereafter, bending forward, and peering at me as a blind man wou