om were not fully developed, but you fancy the sculptor
would need a great creative genius to mold them. You gaze, and little
by little the desire comes over you to say to Masha something
extraordinarily pleasant, sincere, beautiful, as beautiful as she
herself was.

At first I felt hurt and abashed that Masha took no notice of me, but
was all the time looking down; it seemed to me as though a peculiar
atmosphere, proud and happy, separated her from me and jealously
screened her from my eyes.

"That's because I am covered with dust," I thought, "am sunburnt, and am
still a boy."

But little by little I forgot myself, and gave myself up entirely to the
consciousness of beauty. I thought no more now of the dreary steppe, of
the dust, no longer heard the buzzing of the flies, no longer tasted the
tea, and felt nothing except that a beautiful girl was standing only the
other side of the table.

I felt this beauty rather strangely. It was not desire, nor ecstacy,
nor enjoyment that Masha excited in me, but a painful though pleasant
sadness. It was a sadness vague and undefined as a dream. For some
reason I felt sorry for myself, for my grandfather and for the Armenian,
even for the girl herself, and I had a feeling as though we all four
had lost something important and essential to life which we should never
find again. My grandfather, too, grew melancholy; he talked no more
about manure or about oats, but sat silent, looking pensively at Masha.

After tea my grandfather lay down for a nap while I went out of the
house into the porch. The house, like all the houses in the Armenian
village stood in the full sun; there was not a tree, not an awning, no
shade. The Armenian's great courtyard, overgrown with goosefoot and
wild mallows, was lively and full of gaiety in spite of the great heat.
Threshing was going on behind one of the low hurdles which intersected
the big yard here and there. Round a post stuck into the middle of the
threshing-floor ran a dozen horses harnessed side by side, so that they
formed one long radius. A Little Russian in a long waistcoat and full
trousers was walking beside them, cracking a whip and shouting in a tone
that sounded as though he were jeering at the horses and showing off his
power over them.

"A--a--a, you damned brutes!... A--a--a, plague take you! Are you
frightened?"

The horses, sorrel, white, and piebald, not understanding why they
were made to run round in one place and to cr