ing upon the mouldy, gnarled old oaken stump on which
we are sitting, she adds:

"The Cossacks, for instance, live comfortably enough; yet I do not like
them."

"What in them is it that displeases you?"

"Somehow they repel me. True, much of everything is theirs; yet also
they have ways which alienate me."

Unable any longer to conceal from her my pity, I say gently:

"Never, I fear, will you discover what you are seeking."

She shakes her head protestingly.

"And never ought a woman to be discouraged," she retorts. "Woman's
proper round is to wish for a child, and to nurse it, and, when it has
been weaned, to get herself ready to have another one. That is how
woman should live. She should live as pass spring and summer, autumn
and winter."

I find it a pleasure to watch the play of the woman's intellectual
features; and though, also, I long to take her in my arms, I feel that
my better plan will be to seek once more the quiet, empty steppe, and,
bearing in me the recollection of this woman, to resume my lonely
journey towards the region where the silver wall of the mountains
merges with the sky, and the dark ravines gape at the steppe with their
chilly jaws. At the moment, however, I cannot so do, for the Cossacks
have temporarily deprived me of my passport.

"What are you yourself seeking?" she asks suddenly as again she edges
towards me.

"Simply nothing. My one desire is to observe how folk live."

"And are you travelling alone?"

"I am."

"Even as am I. Oh God, how many lonely people there are in the world!"

By this time the cattle are awakening from slumber, and, with their
soft lowings, reminding one of a pipe which I used to hear played by a
certain blind old man. Next, four times, with unsteady touch, the
drowsy watchman strikes his gong--twice softly, once with a vigour that
clangs the metal again, and a fourth time with a mere tap of the iron
hammer against the copper plate.

"What sort of lives do the majority of folk lead?"

"Sorry lives."

"Yes, that is what I too have found."

A pause follows. Then the woman says quietly:

"See, dawn is breaking, yet never this night have my eyes closed. Often
I am like that; often I keep thinking and thinking until I seem to be
the only human being in the world, and the only human being destined to
re-order it."

"Many folk live unworthy lives. They live them amid discord, abasement,
and wrongs innumerable, wrongs born of want and stupidity."