id Lida. "It is easier to disapprove of
schools and hospitals, than to teach or heal."

"That's true, Lida--that's true," the mother assented.

"You threaten to give up working," said Lida. "You evidently set a
high value on your work. Let us give up arguing; we shall never
agree, since I put the most imperfect dispensary or library of which
you have just spoken so contemptuously on a higher level than any
landscape." And turning at once to her mother, she began speaking
in quite a different tone: "The prince is very much changed, and
much thinner than when he was with us last. He is being sent to
Vichy."

She told her mother about the prince in order to avoid talking to
me. Her face glowed, and to hide her feeling she bent low over the
table as though she were short-sighted, and made a show of reading
the newspaper. My presence was disagreeable to her. I said good-bye
and went home.

IV

It was quite still out of doors; the village on the further side
of the pond was already asleep; there was not a light to be seen,
and only the stars were faintly reflected in the pond. At the gate
with the lions on it Genya was standing motionless, waiting to
escort me.

"Every one is asleep in the village," I said to her, trying to make
out her face in the darkness, and I saw her mournful dark eyes fixed
upon me. "The publican and the horse-stealers are asleep, while we,
well-bred people, argue and irritate each other."

It was a melancholy August night--melancholy because there was
already a feeling of autumn; the moon was rising behind a purple
cloud, and it shed a faint light upon the road and on the dark
fields of winter corn by the sides. From time to time a star fell.
Genya walked beside me along the road, and tried not to look at the
sky, that she might not see the falling stars, which for some reason
frightened her.

"I believe you are right," she said, shivering with the damp night
air. "If people, all together, could devote themselves to spiritual
ends, they would soon know everything."

"Of course. We are higher beings, and if we were really to recognise
the whole force of human genius and lived only for higher ends, we
should in the end become like gods. But that will never be--mankind
will degenerate till no traces of genius remain."

When the gates were out of sight, Genya stopped and shook hands
with me.

"Good-night," she said, shivering; she had nothing but her blouse
over her shoulders and was shrin