On the Eve

h her. At this time she held converse with herself, and passed in review the preceding day. She had not long reached her twentieth year. She was tall, and had a pale and dark face, large grey eyes

in her smile, which was, as it were, intense, in her soft and uneven voice, there was something nervous, electric, some

had behaved to her mother as to a sick grandmother; while her father, who had been proud of her while she had been regarded as an exceptional child, had come to be afraid of her when she was grown up, and said of her that she was a sort of enthusiastic republican-no one could say where she got it from. Weakness revolted her, stupidity made her

in Elena; she fed them herself, and felt no repugnance for them. Her mother did not interfere with her; but her father used to be very indignant with his daughter, for her-as he called it-vulgar soft-heartedness, and declared there was not room to move for the cats and dogs in the house. 'Lenotchka,' he would shout to her, 'come quickly, here's a spider eating a fly; come and save the poor wretch!' And Lenotchka, all excitement, would run up, set the fly free, and disentangle its legs. 'Well, now let it bite you a little, since you are so kind,' her father would say ironically; but she did not hear him. At ten years old Elena made friends with a little beggar-girl, 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 sh

up such horrors?' sh

es sooner than betray her secret, and again there was a terror and sweetness in her heart. Her friendship wi

e heard of Katya's death. The last words of the little beggar-girl were co

n. Sometimes she did not understand herself, was even frightened of herself. Everything that surrounded her seemed to her half-senseless, half-incomprehensible. 'How live without love? and there's no one to love!' she thought; and she felt terror again at these thoughts, these sensations. At eighteen, she nearly died of malignant fever; her whole constitution-naturally healthy and vigorous-was seriously affected, and it was long before it could perfectly recover; the last traces of the illness disappeared at last, but Elena Nikolaevna's father was never tired of talking with some spitefulness of her 'nerves.' Sometimes she fancied that she wanted something

lled the expression of his timid eyes, his smiles-and she smiled herself and fell to musing, but not of him. She began to look out into the night from the open window. For a long time she gazed at the dark, low-hanging sky; then she got up, flung back her hair from her face with a shake of her head, and, h