amiliar attitude, where she had only to close her eyes to see
Serge before her, Mavra was happy; she was of those for whom the
innocent and daily presence of the beloved makes the whole happiness
of life. Here, where nothing spoke of him, she felt for the first time
the pain of separation. Uneasy, she asked herself what it was that
was torturing her to this degree, and the truth nearly dawned upon
her. But she stopped the thought, not daring to sound it further,
saying to herself that there must be at the root of all this suffering
some great sin she herself was ignorant of. Morning and evening she
knelt long before the sacred images, imploring God to deliver her
from her pain; and feeling herself soothed by this effusion of mystic
tenderness, she kept her sadness to herself, still refusing to fathom
it. But she was visibly wasting away: the smoky atmosphere of her home
had now the same painful influence upon her that the want of fresh air
had formerly when she first left her village. She passed the winter
suffering, uncomplaining, unrelaxing in her work. Gradually she gave
up looking at the stars. Not only did they more than ever look like
tears, but no sooner did she turn her eyes toward the night sky than
they filled with tears, so she hardly knew whether it was the fires of
heaven or her own tears sparkling beneath her eyelids.

Spring came, though more tardily than usual; then summer with its
field labors. The countess seemed to have forgotten Mavra, who thought
with ever more and more resigned sadness of this much-loved mistress.

Her indulgence concerning the service-dues of her family appeared to
the young girl not a favor, but a punishment. At hay-making as at
harvest young lads seek out the girls. Had Mavra wished it, she might
have found ten husbands. She was no longer quite young according to
the notion of peasants, who marry their daughters at sixteen and their
boys at twenty. She was getting on to twenty, and her mother at times
reproached her, treating her as a "useless mouth," although Mavra's
embroidery was readily bought by the traders from the large towns, who
came to the village twice a year.

In the beginning of September, Serge said to his young wife, who was
about to make him a father:

"If you follow my advice, you will yourself nurse our child."

"I should like to do so, but then I must have a trained, devoted
servant, one endowed with all the virtues," answered the young wife,
"and mamma s