the Flood." Kostya skimmed through a brief description of the Flood
in the book, and said: "I must remark that there really never was
a flood such as is described here. And there was no such person as
Noah. Some thousands of years before the birth of Christ, there was
an extraordinary inundation of the earth, and that's not only
mentioned in the Jewish Bible, but in the books of other ancient
peoples: the Greeks, the Chaldeans, the Hindoos. But whatever the
inundation may have been, it couldn't have covered the whole earth.
It may have flooded the plains, but the mountains must have remained.
You can read this book, of course, but don't put too much faith in
it."

Tears trickled down Lida's face again. She turned away and suddenly
burst into such loud sobs, that Kostya started and jumped up from
his seat in great confusion.

"I want to go home," she said, "to papa and to nurse."

Sasha cried too. Kostya went upstairs to his own room, and spoke
on the telephone to Yulia Sergeyevna.

"My dear soul," he said, "the little girls are crying again; there's
no doing anything with them."

Yulia Sergeyevna ran across from the big house in her indoor dress,
with only a knitted shawl over her shoulders, and chilled through
by the frost, began comforting the children.

"Do believe me, do believe me," she said in an imploring voice,
hugging first one and then the other. "Your papa's coming to-day;
he has sent a telegram. You're grieving for mother, and I grieve
too. My heart's torn, but what can we do? We must bow to God's
will!"

When they left off crying, she wrapped them up and took them out
for a drive. They stopped near the Iverskoy chapel, put up candles
at the shrine, and, kneeling down, prayed. On the way back they
went in Filippov's, and had cakes sprinkled with poppy-seeds.

The Laptevs had dinner between two and three. Pyotr handed the
dishes. This Pyotr waited on the family, and by day ran to the post,
to the warehouse, to the law courts for Kostya; he spent his evenings
making cigarettes, ran to open the door at night, and before five
o'clock in the morning was up lighting the stoves, and no one knew
where he slept. He was very fond of opening seltzer-water bottles
and did it easily, without a bang and without spilling a drop.

"With God's blessing," said Kostya, drinking off a glass of vodka
before the soup.

At first Yulia Sergeyevna did not like Kostya; his bass voice, his
phrases such as "Landed him o