walk about like
that, aimless and unoccupied, the whole day, the whole summer.

Genya came out with a basket; she had a look in her face as though
she knew she would find me in the garden, or had a presentiment of
it. We gathered mushrooms and talked, and when she asked a question
she walked a little ahead so as to see my face.

"A miracle happened in the village yesterday," she said. "The lame
woman Pelagea has been ill the whole year. No doctors or medicines
did her any good; but yesterday an old woman came and whispered
something over her, and her illness passed away."

"That's nothing much," I said. "You mustn't look for miracles only
among sick people and old women. Isn't health a miracle? And life
itself? Whatever is beyond understanding is a miracle."

"And aren't you afraid of what is beyond understanding?"

"No. Phenomena I don't understand I face boldly, and am not overwhelmed
by them. I am above them. Man ought to recognise himself as superior
to lions, tigers, stars, superior to everything in nature, even
what seems miraculous and is beyond his understanding, or else he
is not a man, but a mouse afraid of everything."

Genya believed that as an artist I knew a very great deal, and could
guess correctly what I did not know. She longed for me to initiate
her into the domain of the Eternal and the Beautiful--into that
higher world in which, as she imagined, I was quite at home. And
she talked to me of God, of the eternal life, of the miraculous.
And I, who could never admit that my self and my imagination would
be lost forever after death, answered: "Yes, men are immortal";
"Yes, there is eternal life in store for us." And she listened,
believed, and did not ask for proofs.

As we were going home she stopped suddenly and said:

"Our Lida is a remarkable person--isn't she? I love her very
dearly, and would be ready to give my life for her any minute. But
tell me"--Genya touched my sleeve with her finger--"tell me,
why do you always argue with her? Why are you irritated?"

"Because she is wrong."

Genya shook her head and tears came into her eyes.

"How incomprehensible that is!" she said. At that minute Lida had
just returned from somewhere, and standing with a whip in her hand,
a slim, beautiful figure in the sunlight, at the steps, she was
giving some orders to one of the men. Talking loudly, she hurriedly
received two or three sick villagers; then with a busy and anxious
face she walked about th