stopping at the
door said softly: "Now rest. I hope you have a good night."

Her voice blew a warm breath on the mother, and her gray eyes embraced
the mother's face in a caress. She took Sofya's hand and pressing it
in hers, answered: "Thank you! You are good people."

CHAPTER III

Three days passed in incessant conversations with Sofya and Nikolay.
The mother continued to recount tales of the past, which stubbornly
arose from the depths of her awakened soul, and disturbed even herself.
Her past demanded an explanation. The attention with which the brother
and sister listened to her opened her heart more and more widely,
freeing her from the narrow, dark cage of her former life.

On the fourth day, early in the morning, she and Sofya appeared before
Nikolay as burgher women, poorly clad in worn chintz skirts and
blouses, with birchbark sacks on their shoulders, and canes in their
hands. This costume reduced Sofya's height and gave a yet sterner
appearance to her pale face.

"You look as if you had walked about monasteries all your life,"
observed Nikolay on taking leave of his sister, and pressed her hand
warmly. The mother again remarked the simplicity and calmness of their
relation to each other. It was hard for her to get used to it. No
kissing, no affectionate words passed between them; but they behaved so
sincerely, so amicably and solicitously toward each other. In the life
she had been accustomed to, people kissed a great deal and uttered many
sentimental words, but always bit at one another like hungry dogs.

The women walked down the street in silence, reached the open country,
and strode on side by side along the wide beaten road between a double
row of birches.

"Won't you get tired?" the mother asked.

"Do you think I haven't done much walking? All this is an old story to
me."

With a merry smile, as if speaking of some glorious childhood frolics,
Sofya began to tell the mother of her revolutionary work. She had had
to live under a changed name, use counterfeit documents, disguise
herself in various costumes in order to hide from spies, carry hundreds
and hundreds of pounds of illegal books through various cities, arrange
escapes for comrades in exile, and escort them abroad. She had had a
printing press fixed up in her quarters, and when on learning of it the
gendarmes appeared to make a search, she succeeded in a minute's time
before their arrival in dressing as a servant,