ht. I shall go away to-morrow; I
shall become a telegraph clerk. . . . I don't care. . . ."

"Come, come, come. . . . You mustn't cry, Tanya. You mustn't, dear
. . . . You are both hot-tempered and irritable, and you are both to
blame. Come along; I will reconcile you."

Kovrin talked affectionately and persuasively, while she went on
crying, twitching her shoulders and wringing her hands, as though
some terrible misfortune had really befallen her. He felt all the
sorrier for her because her grief was not a serious one, yet she
suffered extremely. What trivialities were enough to make this
little creature miserable for a whole day, perhaps for her whole
life! Comforting Tanya, Kovrin thought that, apart from this girl
and her father, he might hunt the world over and would not find
people who would love him as one of themselves, as one of their
kindred. If it had not been for those two he might very likely,
having lost his father and mother in early childhood, never to the
day of his death have known what was meant by genuine affection and
that naive, uncritical love which is only lavished on very close
blood relations; and he felt that the nerves of this weeping, shaking
girl responded to his half-sick, overstrained nerves like iron to
a magnet. He never could have loved a healthy, strong, rosy-cheeked
woman, but pale, weak, unhappy Tanya attracted him.

And he liked stroking her hair and her shoulders, pressing her hand
and wiping away her tears. . . . At last she left off crying. She
went on for a long time complaining of her father and her hard,
insufferable life in that house, entreating Kovrin to put himself
in her place; then she began, little by little, smiling, and sighing
that God had given her such a bad temper. At last, laughing aloud,
she called herself a fool, and ran out of the room.

When a little later Kovrin went into the garden, Yegor Semyonitch
and Tanya were walking side by side along an avenue as though nothing
had happened, and both were eating rye bread with salt on it, as
both were hungry.

V

Glad that he had been so successful in the part of peacemaker,
Kovrin went into the park. Sitting on a garden seat, thinking, he
heard the rattle of a carriage and a feminine laugh--visitors
were arriving. When the shades of evening began falling on the
garden, the sounds of the violin and singing voices reached him
indistinctly, and that reminded him of the black monk. Where, in
what land or in wh