d waved me to step quietly.
There was a silence. The lid of the piano was raised; a lady sat
down at it screwing up her short-sighted eyes at the music, and my
Masha walked up to the piano, in a low-necked dress, looking
beautiful, but with a special, new sort of beauty not in the least
like the Masha who used to come and meet me in the spring at the
mill. She sang: "Why do I love the radiant night?"

It was the first time during our whole acquaintance that I had heard
her sing. She had a fine, mellow, powerful voice, and while she
sang I felt as though I were eating a ripe, sweet, fragrant melon.
She ended, the audience applauded, and she smiled, very much pleased,
making play with her eyes, turning over the music, smoothing her
skirts, like a bird that has at last broken out of its cage and
preens its wings in freedom. Her hair was arranged over her ears,
and she had an unpleasant, defiant expression in her face, as though
she wanted to throw down a challenge to us all, or to shout to us
as she did to her horses: "Hey, there, my beauties!"

And she must at that moment have been very much like her grandfather
the sledge-driver.

"You here too?" she said, giving me her hand. "Did you hear me sing?
Well, what did you think of it?" and without waiting for my answer
she went on: "It's a very good thing you are here. I am going
to-night to Petersburg for a short time. You'll let me go, won't
you?"

At midnight I went with her to the station. She embraced me
affectionately, probably feeling grateful to me for not asking
unnecessary questions, and she promised to write to me, and I held
her hands a long time, and kissed them, hardly able to restrain my
tears and not uttering a word.

And when she had gone I stood watching the retreating lights,
caressing her in imagination and softly murmuring:

"My darling Masha, glorious Masha. . . ."

I spent the night at Karpovna's, and next morning I was at work
with Radish, re-covering the furniture of a rich merchant who was
marrying his daughter to a doctor.

XVII

My sister came after dinner on Sunday and had tea with me.

"I read a great deal now," she said, showing me the books which she
had fetched from the public library on her way to me. "Thanks to
your wife and to Vladimir, they have awakened me to self-realization.
They have been my salvation; they have made me feel myself a human
being. In old days I used to lie awake at night with worries of all
sorts, thinkin