day and night, to endure a terrible mental illness,
to experience an unhappy marriage, and to do a great number of
stupid and unjust things which it would have been pleasant not to
remember. Kovrin recognised clearly, now, that he was a mediocrity,
and readily resigned himself to it, as he considered that every man
ought to be satisfied with what he is.

The plan of the volume would have soothed him completely, but the
torn letter showed white on the floor and prevented him from
concentrating his attention. He got up from the table, picked up
the pieces of the letter and threw them out of window, but there
was a light wind blowing from the sea, and the bits of paper were
scattered on the windowsill. Again he was overcome by uneasiness
akin to terror, and he felt as though in the whole hotel there were
no living soul but himself. . . . He went out on the balcony. The
bay, like a living thing, looked at him with its multitude of light
blue, dark blue, turquoise and fiery eyes, and seemed beckoning to
him. And it really was hot and oppressive, and it would not have
been amiss to have a bathe.

Suddenly in the lower storey under the balcony a violin began
playing, and two soft feminine voices began singing. It was something
familiar. The song was about a maiden, full of sick fancies, who
heard one night in her garden mysterious sounds, so strange and
lovely that she was obliged to recognise them as a holy harmony
which is unintelligible to us mortals, and so flies back to heaven
. . . . Kovrin caught his breath and there was a pang of sadness at
his heart, and a thrill of the sweet, exquisite delight he had so
long forgotten began to stir in his breast.

A tall black column, like a whirlwind or a waterspout, appeared on
the further side of the bay. It moved with fearful rapidity across
the bay, towards the hotel, growing smaller and darker as it came,
and Kovrin only just had time to get out of the way to let it pass
. . . . The monk with bare grey head, black eyebrows, barefoot, his
arms crossed over his breast, floated by him, and stood still in
the middle of the room.

"Why did you not believe me?" he asked reproachfully, looking
affectionately at Kovrin. "If you had believed me then, that you
were a genius, you would not have spent these two years so gloomily
and so wretchedly."

Kovrin already believed that he was one of God's chosen and a genius;
he vividly recalled his conversations with the monk in the past a