ated by the
naive tone, by this remorse, so unexpected and inopportune; but for
the tears in her eyes, he might have thought she was jesting or
playing a part.

"I don't understand," he said softly. "What is it you want?"

She hid her face on his breast and pressed close to him.

"Believe me, believe me, I beseech you . . ." she said. "I love a
pure, honest life, and sin is loathsome to me. I don't know what I
am doing. Simple people say: 'The Evil One has beguiled me.' And I
may say of myself now that the Evil One has beguiled me."

"Hush, hush! . . ." he muttered.

He looked at her fixed, scared eyes, kissed her, talked softly and
affectionately, and by degrees she was comforted, and her gaiety
returned; they both began laughing.

Afterwards when they went out there was not a soul on the sea-front.
The town with its cypresses had quite a deathlike air, but the sea
still broke noisily on the shore; a single barge was rocking on the
waves, and a lantern was blinking sleepily on it.

They found a cab and drove to Oreanda.

"I found out your surname in the hall just now: it was written on
the board--Von Diderits," said Gurov. "Is your husband a German?"

"No; I believe his grandfather was a German, but he is an Orthodox
Russian himself."

At Oreanda they sat on a seat not far from the church, looked down
at the sea, and were silent. Yalta was hardly visible through the
morning mist; white clouds stood motionless on the mountain-tops.
The leaves did not stir on the trees, grasshoppers chirruped, and
the monotonous hollow sound of the sea rising up from below, spoke
of the peace, of the eternal sleep awaiting us. So it must have
sounded when there was no Yalta, no Oreanda here; so it sounds now,
and it will sound as indifferently and monotonously when we are all
no more. And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to
the life and death of each of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge
of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon
earth, of unceasing progress towards perfection. Sitting beside a
young woman who in the dawn seemed so lovely, soothed and spellbound
in these magical surroundings--the sea, mountains, clouds, the
open sky--Gurov thought how in reality everything is beautiful
in this world when one reflects: everything except what we think
or do ourselves when we forget our human dignity and the higher
aims of our existence.

A man walked up to them--probably a keeper--loo