Katya,
and used to go secretly to meet her in the garden, took her nice things
to eat, and presented her with handkerchiefs and pennies; playthings
Katya would not take. She would sit beside her on the dry earth among
the bushes behind a thick growth of nettles; with a feeling of delicious
humility she ate her stale bread and listened to her stories. Katya had
an aunt, an ill-natured old woman, who often beat her; Katya hated her,
and was always talking of how she would run away from her aunt and live
in '_God's full freedom_'; with secret respect and awe Elena drank in
these new unknown words, stared intently at Katya and everything about
her--her quick black, almost animal eyes, her sun-burnt hands, her
hoarse voice, even her ragged clothes--seemed to Elena at such times
something particular and distinguished, almost holy. Elena went back
home, and for long after dreamed of beggars and God's freedom; she would
dream over plans of how she would cut herself a hazel stick, and put on
a wallet and run away with Katya; how she would wander about the roads
in a wreath of corn-flowers; she had seen Katya one day in just such a
wreath. If, at such times, any one of her family came into the room, she
would shun them and look shy. One day she ran out in the rain to meet
Katya, and made her frock muddy; her father saw her, and called her a
slut and a peasant-wench. She grew hot all over, and there was something
of terror and rapture in her heart Katya often sang some half-brutal
soldier's song. Elena learnt this song from her.... Anna Vassilyevna
overheard her singing it, and was very indignant.

'Where did you pick up such horrors?' she asked her daughter.

Elena only looked at her mother, and would not say a word; she felt that
she would let them tear her to pieces sooner than betray her secret, and
again there was a terror and sweetness in her heart. Her friendship with
Katya, however, did not last long; the poor little girl fell sick of
fever, and in a few days she was dead.

Elena was greatly distressed, and spent sleepless nights for long after
she heard of Katya's death. The last words of the little beggar-girl
were constantly ringing in her ears, and she fancied that she was being
called....

The years passed and passed; swiftly and noiselessly, like waters
running under the snow, Elena's youth glided by, outwardly uneventful,
inwardly in conflict and emotion. She had no friend; she did not get
on with any one of al