their blood had been spilt.
"Wall-flowers?" asked Lisa one ay, she was very fond of flowers....
Agafya spoke to Lisa gravely and meekly, as though she felt herself to
be unworthy to utter such high and holy words. Lisa listened to her, and
the image of the all-seeing, all-knowing God penetrated with a kind of
sweet power into her very soul, filling it with pure and reverent awe;
but Christ became for her something near, well-known, almost familiar.
Agafya taught her to pray also. Sometimes she wakened Lisa early at
daybreak, dressed her hurriedly, and took her in secret to matins. Lisa
followed her on tiptoe, almost holding her breath. The cold and twilight
of the early morning, the freshness and emptiness of the church, the
very secrecy of these unexpected expeditions, the cautious return home
and to her little bed, all these mingled impressions of the forbidden,
strange, and holy agitated the little girl and penetrated to the very
innermost depths of her nature. Agafya never censured any one, and never
scolded Lisa for being naughty. When she was displeased at anything,
she only kept silence. And Lisa understood this silence; with a child's
quick-sightedness she knew very well, too, when Agafya was displeased
with other people, Marya Dmitrievna, or Kalitin himself. For a little
over three years, Agafya waited on Lisa, then Mademoiselle Moreau
replaced her; but the frivolous Frenchwoman, with her cold ways and
exclamation, tout ca c'est des betises, could never dislodge her dear
nurse from Lisa's heart; the seeds that had been dropped into it had
become too deeply rooted. Besides, though Agafya no longer waited on
Lisa, she was still in the house and often saw her charge, who believed
in her as before.

Agafya did not, however, get on well with Marfa Timofyevna, when she
came to live in the Kalitins' house. Such gravity and dignity on the
part of one who had once worn the motley skirt of a peasant wench
displeased the impatient and self-willed old lady. Agafya asked leave to
go on a pilgrimage and she never came back. There were dark rumours that
she had gone off to a retreat of sectaries. But the impression she had
left in Lisa's soul was never obliterated. She went as before to
the mass as to a festival, she prayed with rapture, with a kind of
restrained and shamefaced transport, at which Marya Dmitrievna secretly
marvelled not a little, and even Marfa Timofyevna, though she did not
restrain Lisa in any way, tried t