a good deal, for his time had not been always spent in Bondavara, and
out in the world he had known many women--he had known no woman like
this.

She is afraid they will say I am her lover; she is afraid they will
tease her so much on that account that she may have to leave the
place! Has she, then, no idea that once I, the master, loved a girl
here, she would not push the wheelbarrow any more? Does she even know
what a lover is? She knows well that she must guard herself against
one. Poor child! How earnest she was, and yet she laughed, and she did
not know why she laughed, nor yet why she was grave. A savage in the
guise of an angel!

He got up, locked his desk, and turned to leave his office; then again
remained, thinking.

She is unlike every other woman. I doubt if she knows how beautiful
she is, or what is the worth of beauty. She is Eve, a perfect copy of
Eve--the Eve of Scripture, and the Eve of Milton. She is Eve, in not
knowing wherefore she should blush over her own nakedness--the type of
the beautiful in its primitive state, unwashed, savage, with hair
unconfined, who wanders through the garden, fearing nothing, and even
playing with a serpent. With men she is a woman, by herself she is a
child, and yet she displays a motherly care for her little brother.
Her figure is a model for a sculptor, her countenance is full of mind,
her eyes bewitching, her voice melodious; and yet her hands are hard
with the barrow-poles, her mind is troubled with sordid cares for her
daily bread, her face is covered with coal-smut, and she has learned
her songs in the street.

"The worse for her!" and, after a pause, Ivan added with a sigh, "and
the worse for another besides her."

In his mind a total revolution had taken place. The intellectual
spirits had for the nonce deserted him, and in their place others had
come of a very different order--those demons which the blessed Antony
had fought with such good effect in the desert.

When poor Ivan tried to banish these tempters by burying himself in
his books and his scientific instruments the form of Evila came
between him and the experiment he was busy on, just as Marguerite
appeared to Doctor Faust in his laboratory; her voice sounded in his
ear, her eyes glowed in the coals, and when he tried to write he found
himself drawing a maiden in a blue bodice and short red skirt. It was
the same with everything he undertook. Some mocking demon seemed bent
on tormenting him.

A