recalling memories of her husband," the mother noted, "and
she smiles!"

"How much happiness that man gave me!" said Sofya in a low voice,
accompanying her words with light sounds on the keys. "What a capacity
he had for living! He was always aglow with joy, buoyant, childlike
joy!"

"Childlike," repeated the mother to herself, and shook her head as if
agreeing with something.

"Ye-es," said Nikolay, pulling his beard, "his soul was always singing."

"When I played this piece for him the first time, he put it in these
words." Sofya turned her face to her brother, and slowly stretched out
her arms. Encircled with blue streaks of smoke, she spoke in a low,
rapturous voice. "In a barren sea of the far north, under the gray
canopy of the cold heavens, stands a lonely black island, an unpeopled
rock, covered with ice; the smoothly polished shore descends abruptly
into the gray, foaming billows. The transparently blue blocks of ice
inhospitably float on the shaking cold water and press against the dark
rock of the island. Their knocking resounds mournfully in the dead
stillness of the barren sea. They have been floating a long time on
the bottomless depths, and the waves splashing about them have quietly
borne them toward the lonely rock in the midst of the sea. The sound
is grewsome as they break against the shore and against one another,
sadly inquiring: 'Why?'"

Sofya flung away the cigarette she had begun to smoke, turned to the
piano, and again began to play the ringing plaints, the plaints of the
lonely blocks of ice by the shore of the barren island in the sea of
the far north.

The mother was overcome with unendurable sadness as she listened to the
simple sketch. It blended strangely with her past, into which her
recollections kept boring deeper and deeper.

"In music one can hear everything," said Nikolay quietly.

Sofya turned toward the mother, and asked:

"Do you mind my noise?"

The mother was unable to restrain her slight irritation.

"I told you not to pay any attention to me. I sit here and listen and
think about myself."

"No, you ought to understand," said Sofya. "A woman can't help
understanding music, especially when in grief."

She struck the keys powerfully, and a loud shout went forth, as if some
one had suddenly heard horrible news, which pierced him to the heart,
and wrenched from him this troubled sound. Young voices trembled in
affright, people rushed about in haste, p