by the fine weather, was wheeled thither in her Bath chair.  There were not many people in church, as most of them go later for high mass.  Sitting on the bench by Aniela’s side, I had the blissful illusion that I was sitting with my affianced wife.  From time to time I looked at the sweet, dear profile, at the hands which were resting on the desk before her, and the concentration in her face and bearing gradually infected me.  My senses went to sleep, my thoughts became purer, and I loved her at that moment with an ideal love, because I felt more than ever how different she was from any other woman, how infinitely better and purer.

For a long time I had not felt anything like what I felt in this quiet village church.  Added to Aniela’s presence there was the impressive dignity of the church itself, the soft, flickering light of the candles in the dim recess of the altar, shafts of colored light coming through the windows, the chirping sparrows, and the still mass.  All this, with the dreaminess of an early morning, had something unutterably soothing.  My thoughts began to flow as evenly as the incense at the altar.  Nobler feelings stirred within me, and a desire to sacrifice my own self.  An inward voice began to remonstrate:—­

“Do not disturb that transparent water; respect its purity.”

When the mass came to an end, and we left the church, I saw, to my greatest amazement, both the Latyszes crouching near the church gate, with wooden plates in their hands, asking for alms.  My aunt, who knew about my gift, grew very angry upon seeing them there, and began to abuse them roundly.  But the old woman, still holding out her wooden plate, and not at all abashed, said quietly:—­

“His lordship’s generosity is one thing, and God’s will is another.  We must not go against the Lord’s will.  When the little Lord Jesus told us to sit here, we must, now and forever and ever, Amen.”

There was nothing to say against this kind of reasoning; especially that “forever and ever, Amen,” imposed upon me, to such an extent that I gave them some money for the oddity of the thing.  These people at the bottom of their hearts believe in fate, which they dress up in Christian forms, and submit to it blindly.  These Latyszes, to whom I gave a thousand two hundred roubles, are now better off than they ever were in their lives, and yet they went to sit at the church gates because such was their fate,—­which the old woman translated into the “will of God.”

When we were wending our way homewards, the bells were ringing for high mass.  On the road appeared groups of men and women.  From the more distant hamlets one could see them going Indian file along the narrow paths amid the corn, which, though still green, had shot up to a considerable height, owing to the early spring.  As far as the eye could reach, in the pure translucid atmosphere, the bright colored kerchiefs of the girls appeared above the wheat-fields like so many poppy flowers.  By the