turn aside to Yasnaya Polyana, and gently counsel the Countess to let her husband — now past seventy — live his life as he pleases, and without opposi-tion... After meeting the Countess it became clear to me that she wants her husband to keep up his sta-tion and take care to appear in the manner befitting the greatest writer in Russia... And I saw him with these two eyes wearing the clothes of a 'muzhik' and walking barefoot, not only inside the house but outside it as well, and washing his shirt with his own hands despite the presence of servants...

"He refuses to receive the visitors, men and

women, who seek him out from distant places — refuses, and persists in refusing, just so, without reason... And he keeps company with the peasants, and has made them a present of most of his prop-erties and estates. Among the things he said to me on this subject: 'A peasant's shoe-sole, Olga, is worth, in my eyes, all wealth and all honor... I know the nobility... I lived among them for a time... I was one of them... and as long as I live I shall never forget how one day, after I had passed the night up late in

one of the palaces — an evening of food and wine and revelry and dancing — I found, at dawn... the poor coachman, stiffened through with cold... dead on his seat... waiting for me!! Ah, my little daughter, how am I to forget that sight?... I assure you this state of things cannot last... The end is near!..'

"I seized the chance of his ease with me and his flowing on in tender, humane talk, and I uttered, in a whisper, the name of the Countess, by way of recon-ciling them; whereupon Count Leo could do nothing but fly into anger, and he glared, insisting to me: 'Man and woman must attain, in their married life, to complete chastity'... I did not quite grasp what he meant by this saying, and I tried once more to say something, but he cut me off testily and ended his tirade standing on his feet: 'We, my little daughter, live this dull life, which is not worth the living, because we have not courage enough to leave life'...

"So he said, and went off, leaving me a lump of bewilderment and confusion."

A second interval of silence passed before Miss Olga returned to speech:

"My father is now in touch with some of those indignant at the sorry pass to which things have come in Russia... they know not... nor do I know, by what 'reform,' by what 'upheaval.' He has written me that one of his friends, 'Vladimir,' will pass through Paris on his way to London to attend a political congress, and my father bids me be at his service and smooth his task — and what could I

possibly do?!... I hate poli-tics... and I do not want to neglect my 'studies'..."

And she added, in a spe-cial tone, her cheeks aglow: "And this green lawn... and my friends the sparrows... and the soft little hours?"

All this while I was listening to her absorbing talk... nay, more than that... my eye and my heart were caught in the play of feeling over her face of pure whiteness, and in her gleaming hands, and how their veins — even their veins — wound about in such perfect symmetry and harmony; and I kept from

looking at her eyes as they strayed away from me into the distance... until the frosty, dew-laden air began to nip at us, and the hour of the art institute's opening drew near... Miss Olga gave me her soft hand, and I helped her to rise; then she set about straightening the shawl and winding it around her shoulders with a graceful feminine motion, and we walked side by side, over the grass, on our way out of the Luxembourg garden...

Suddenly she broke in on my thinking — or as though she wished to carry us both into a new atmosphere... She said: "How I admire your friend Gibran! I admire in him his ambition to reach the far distance... When he speaks, I fancy I see something like a halo about his head... and how it delights me to hear his talk... it is always perfumed with something of his beautiful spirit!! Tell me — is there a woman in his life?! I mean, there must be a woman in his life!..."