"`There are not many houses to be had round here,' I answered
in the same language, `the district has been very disturbed.
A revolution, as you know, has recently been suppressed.
Any further building--'

"`Oh! I don't mean that,' he cried; `I mean a real house--a live house.
It really is a live house, for it runs away from me.'

"`I am ashamed to say that something in his phrase or gesture
moved me profoundly. We Russians are brought up in an atmosphere
of folk-lore, and its unfortunate effects can still be seen
in the bright colours of the children's dolls and of the ikons.
For an instant the idea of a house running away from a man gave
me pleasure, for the enlightenment of man moves slowly.

"`Have you no other house of your own?' I asked.

"`I have left it,' he said very sadly. `It was not the house that grew dull,
but I that grew dull in it. My wife was better than all women, and yet I
could not feel it.'

"`And so,' I said with sympathy, `you walked straight out of the front door,
like a masculine Nora.'

"`Nora?' he inquired politely, apparently supposing it to be a Russian word.

"`I mean Nora in "The Doll's House,"' I replied.

"At this he looked very much astonished, and I knew he was an Englishman;
for Englishmen always think that Russians study nothing but `ukases.'

"`"The Doll's House"?' he cried vehemently; `why, that is just where Ibsen
was so wrong! Why, the whole aim of a house is to be a doll's house.
Don't you remember, when you were a child, how those little windows
WERE windows, while the big windows weren't. A child has a doll's house,
and shrieks when a front door opens inwards. A banker has a real house,
yet how numerous are the bankers who fail to emit the faintest shriek
when their real front doors open inwards.'

"Something from the folk-lore of my infancy still kept me foolishly silent;
and before I could speak, the Englishman had leaned over and was saying
in a sort of loud whisper, `I have found out how to make a big thing small.
I have found out how to turn a house into a doll's house. Get a long
way off it: God lets us turn all things into toys by his great gift
of distance. Once let me see my old brick house standing up quite
little against the horizon, and I shall want to go back to it again.
I shall see the funny little toy lamp-post painted green against the gate,
and all the dear little people like dolls looking out of the window.
For the windows really open