this way? I can't bear this fine toggery, this
sumptuous rustle. A human being is simple by nature, and should dress
simply--beautifully but simply."

The mother looked at her fixedly, smiled, and shaking her head
meditatively said:

"No, it seems that day, the first of May, has changed me. I feel
awkward somehow or other, as if I were walking on two roads at the same
time. At one moment I understand everything; the next moment I am
plunged into a mist. Here are you! I see you a lady; you occupy
yourself with this movement, you know Pasha, and you esteem him. Thank
you!"

"Why, you ought to be thanked!" Sofya laughed.

"I? I didn't teach him about the movement," the mother said with a
sigh. "As I speak now," she continued stubbornly, "everything seems
simple and near. Then, all of a sudden, I cannot understand this
simplicity. Again, I'm calm. In a second I grow fearful, because I AM
calm. I always used to be afraid, my whole life long; but now that
there's a great deal to be afraid of, I have very little fear. Why is
it? I cannot understand." She stopped, at a loss for words. Sofya
looked at her seriously, and waited; but seeing that the mother was
agitated, unable to find the expression she wanted, she herself took up
the conversation.

"A time will come when you'll understand everything. The chief thing
that gives a person power and faith in himself is when he begins to
love a certain cause with all his heart, and knows it is a good cause
of use to everybody. There IS such a love. There's everything.
There's no human being too mean to love. But it's time for me to be
getting out of all this magnificence."

Putting the stump of her cigarette in the saucer, she shook her head.
Her golden hair fell back in thick waves. She walked away smiling.
The mother followed her with her eyes, sighed, and looked around. Her
thoughts came to a halt, and in a half-drowsy, oppressive condition of
quiet, she began to get the dishes together.

At four o'clock Nikolay appeared. Then they dined. Sofya, laughing at
times, told how she met and concealed the fugitive, how she feared the
spies, and saw one in every person she met, and how comically the
fugitive conducted himself. Something in her tone reminded the mother
of the boasting of a workingman who had completed a difficult piece of
work to his own satisfaction. She was now dressed in a flowing,
dove-colored robe, which fell from her shoulders to her f