for
business. She took from her table a thick paper-backed volume, one of
the "line" of paper novels the druggist kept to sell to traveling men.
She had bought it, only yesterday, because the first sentence interested
her very much, and because she saw, as she glanced over the pages, the
magical names of two Russian cities. The book was a poor translation of
"Anna Karenina." Thea opened it at a mark, and fixed her eyes intently
upon the small print. The hymns, the sick girl, the resigned black
figures were forgotten. It was the night of the ball in Moscow.

Thea would have been astonished if she could have known how, years
afterward, when she had need of them, those old faces were to come back
to her, long after they were hidden away under the earth; that they
would seem to her then as full of meaning, as mysteriously marked by
Destiny, as the people who danced the mazurka under the elegant
Korsunsky.

XVIII

Mr. Kronborg was too fond of his ease and too sensible to worry his
children much about religion. He was more sincere than many preachers,
but when he spoke to his family about matters of conduct it was usually
with a regard for keeping up appearances. The church and church work
were discussed in the family like the routine of any other business.
Sunday was the hard day of the week with them, just as Saturday was the
busy day with the merchants on Main Street. Revivals were seasons of
extra work and pressure, just as threshing-time was on the farms.
Visiting elders had to be lodged and cooked for, the folding-bed in the
parlor was let down, and Mrs. Kronborg had to work in the kitchen all
day long and attend the night meetings.

During one of these revivals Thea's sister Anna professed religion with,
as Mrs. Kronborg said, "a good deal of fluster." While Anna was going up
to the mourners' bench nightly and asking for the prayers of the
congregation, she disseminated general gloom throughout the household,
and after she joined the church she took on an air of "set-apartness"
that was extremely trying to her brothers and her sister, though they
realized that Anna's sanctimoniousness was perhaps a good thing for
their father. A preacher ought to have one child who did more than
merely acquiesce in religious observances, and Thea and the boys were
glad enough that it was Anna and not one of themselves who assumed this
obligation.

"Anna, she's American," Mrs. Kronborg used to say. The Scandinavian
mould o