pen-eyed, she reflected coldly and clearly
that something had happened which she could never forget and for
which she could never forgive herself all her life.

"No, I can't go on like this," she thought. "It's time to take
myself in hand, or there'll be no end to it. . . . I can't go on
like this. . . ."

At midday Dr. Neshtchapov drove by the ravine on his way to the
house. She saw him and made up her mind that she would begin a new
life, and that she would make herself begin it, and this decision
calmed her. And following with her eyes the doctor's well-built
figure, she said, as though trying to soften the crudity of her
decision:

"He's a nice man. . . . We shall get through life somehow."

She returned home. While she was dressing, Auntie Dasha came into
the room, and said:

"Alyona upset you, darling; I've sent her home to the village. Her
mother's given her a good beating and has come here, crying."

"Auntie," said Vera quickly, "I'm going to marry Dr. Neshtchapov.
Only talk to him yourself . . . I can't."

And again she went out into the fields. And wandering aimlessly
about, she made up her mind that when she was married she would
look after the house, doctor the peasants, teach in the school,
that she would do all the things that other women of her circle
did. And this perpetual dissatisfaction with herself and every one
else, this series of crude mistakes which stand up like a mountain
before one whenever one looks back upon one's past, she would accept
as her real life to which she was fated, and she would expect nothing
better. . . . Of course there was nothing better! Beautiful nature,
dreams, music, told one story, but reality another. Evidently truth
and happiness existed somewhere outside real life. . . . One must
give up one's own life and merge oneself into this luxuriant steppe,
boundless and indifferent as eternity, with its flowers, its ancient
barrows, and its distant horizon, and then it would be well with
one. . . .

A month later Vera was living at the works.

EXPENSIVE LESSONS

FOR a cultivated man to be ignorant of foreign languages is a great
inconvenience. Vorotov became acutely conscious of it when, after
taking his degree, he began upon a piece of research work.

"It's awful," he said, breathing hard (although he was only twenty-six
he was fat, heavy, and suffered from shortness of breath).

"It's awful! Without languages I'm like a bird without wings. I
might just as