be endowed with a similitude of
life, through the faint beating of a vein in its vicinity.

Presently the ladybird raised her upper wings as though she were
preparing for flight; whereupon Nilushka sought with a finger to detain
her, and, in so doing, let fall the leaf, and enabled the insect to
detach itself and fly away at a low level. Upon that, bending forward
with arms outstretched, the idiot went softly in pursuit, much as
though he himself were launching his body into leisurely flight, but,
when ten paces away, stopped, raised his face to heaven, and, with arms
pendent before him, and the palms of his hands turned outwards as
though resting on something which I could not see, remained fixed and
motionless.

From the ravine there were tending upwards towards the sunlight some
green sprigs of willow, with dull yellow flowers and a clump of grey
wormwood, while the damp cracks which seamed the clay of the ravine
were lined with round leaves of the "mother-stepmother plant," and
round about us little birds were hovering, and from both the bushes and
the bed of the ravine there was ascending the moist smell of decay. Yet
over our heads the sky was clear, as the sun, now sole occupant of the
heavens, declined slowly in the direction of the dark marshes across
the river; only above the roofs of Zhitnaia Street could there be seen
fluttering about in alarm a flock of snow-white pigeons, while waving
below them was the black besom which had, as it were, swept them into
the air, and from afar one could hear the sound of an angry murmur, the
mournful, mysterious murmur of the town.

Whiningly, like an old man, a child of the suburb was raising its voice
in lamentation; and as I listened to the sound, it put me in mind of a
clerk reading Vespers amid the desolation of an empty church. Presently
a brown dog passed us with shaggy head despondently pendent, and eyes
as beautiful as those of a drunken woman.

And, to complete the picture, there was standing--outlined against the
nearest shanty of the suburb, a shanty which lay at the extreme edge of
the ravine-there was standing, face to the sun, and back to the town,
as though preparing for flight, the straight, slender form of the boy
who, while alien to all, caressed all with the eternally
incomprehensible smile of his angel-like eyes. Yes, that golden
birthmark so like a bee I can see to this day!

* * * * *

Two weeks later, on a Sunday at m