in a corner, and in taking off the cover made the strings
ring discordantly.

"Edward Karlovitch, play my favorite nocturne--Field's," cried the
countess, from the adjoining room.

Dimmler struck a chord. "How quiet you young people are," he said,
addressing them.

"Yes, we are studying philosophy," said Natacha, and they went on
talking of their dreams.

Dimmler had no sooner begun his nocturne than Natacha, crossing the room
on tiptoe, seized the wax-light that was burning on the table and
carried it into the next room; then she stole back to her seat, it was
now quite dark in the larger room, especially in their corner, but the
silvery moonbeams came in at the wide windows and lay in broad sheets on
the floor.

"Do you know," whispered Natacha, while Dimmler, after playing the
nocturne, let his fingers wander over the strings, uncertain what to
play next, "when I go on remembering one thing beyond another, I go back
so far, so far, that at last I remember things that happened before I
was born, and----"

"That is metempsychosis," interrupted Sonia, with a reminiscence of her
early lessons. "The Egyptians believed that our souls had once inhabited
the bodies of animals, and would return to animals again after our
death."

"I do not believe that," said Natacha, still in a low voice, though the
music had ceased. "But I am quite sure that we were angels once,
somewhere there beyond, or, perhaps, even here; and that is the reason
we remember a previous existence."

"May I join the party?" asked Dimmler, coming towards them.

"If we were once angels, how is it that we have fallen lower?"

"Lower? Who says that it is lower? Who knows what I was?" Natacha
retorted with full conviction. "Since the soul is immortal, and I am to
live forever in the future, I must have existed in the past, so I have
eternity behind me, too."

"Yes; but it is very difficult to conceive of that eternity," said
Dimmler, whose ironical smile had died away.

"Why?" asked Natacha. "After to-day comes to-morrow, and then the day
after, and so on forever; yesterday has been, to-morrow will be----"

"Natacha, now it is your turn; sing me something," said her mother.
"What are you doing in that corner like a party of conspirators?"

"I am not at all in the humor, mamma," said she; nevertheless she rose.
Nicolas sat down to the piano; and standing, as usual, in the middle of
the room, where the voice sounded best, she sang her mother's f