u, my poor friend?"

It would be hard to define the expression of rapidly changing emotions
which passed over the sick man's face, which made his breast heave,
and his great heart quiver and tremble painfully. Displeasure and
pity, sympathy and contempt, anger and grief, all were expressed in
the short, sharp, bitter laugh, and the few words which escaped his
lips when he saw his little daughter timidly following her mother into
his room.

"Do not teach her to lie!" and he nodded toward the child, and turned
toward the wall, with an expression of pain and pity on his face. The
lawyer and the priest hastened to take their leave and disappear.

"Ah! Sinners! sinners!" muttered the latter, as he descended the
stairs.

"Things are not in good shape between them?" asked Lobnitchenko. "They
don't get on well together?"

"How should they be in good shape, when he came here to get a
divorce?" whispered the priest, shaping his fur cap. "But God decided
otherwise. Even without a divorce, he will be separated forever from
his wife!"

"I don't believe he is so very far gone. He is a stalwart old man.
Perhaps he will pull through," went on the man of law.

"God's hand is over all," answered the priest, shrugging his
shoulders. And so they went their different ways.

II

"Olga!" cried the sick man, without turning round, and feeling near
him the swift movement of his wife, he pushed her away with an
impatient movement of his hand, and added, "Not you! my daughter
Olga!"

"Olga! Go, my child, papa is calling you," cried the general's wife in
a soft voice, in French, to the little girl, who was standing
undecidedly in the center of the room.

"Can you not drop your foreign phrases?" angrily interrupted the
general. "This is not a drawing-room! You might drop it, from a sense
of decency."

His voice became shrill, and made the child shudder and begin to cry.
She went to him timidly.

The general looked at her with an expression of pain. He drew her
toward him with his left hand, raising the right to bless her.

"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!" he
whispered, making the sign of the cross over her. "God guard you from
evil, from every bad influence.... Be kind ... honest ... most of all,
be honest! Never tell lies. God guard you from falsehood, from lying,
even more than from sorrow!"

Tears filled the dying man's eyes. Little Olga shuddered from head to
foot; she feared her father, and at