The sisters stayed to lunch.

They remained over an hour chattering cheerfully with the children and their instructresses. The children were sweet and confiding. The instructresses, no less simple and charming, seemed cheerful, care-free, and restful. Yet they were always busy, and nothing escaped them. Besides many of the children did certain things without being urged, this being evidently a part of a system, of which the sisters had as yet barely an inkling.

Instruction was mixed up with play. One of the instructresses invited the sisters to listen to what she called her lesson. The sisters listened with enjoyment to an interesting discourse concerning the objects the children had observed that day in the wood. There were other instructresses who had just returned from the depths of the wood—some children were going into the wood, others were coming out, quite different ones.

The instructress to whom the sisters were listening ended her discourse and suddenly scampered off somewhere. Through the dark foliage of the trees could be seen the glimmer of red caps and of sunburnt arms and legs. The sisters were again left alone. No one paid especial attention to them any longer; evidently there was no one they either embarrassed or hindered.

“It’s time to go,” said Elena.

Elisaveta made a move.

“Yes, let’s go,” she agreed. “It’s very interesting and delightful here, but we can’t stay for ever.”

The departure of the sisters had been noticed. A few of the children ran up to them. The children cried gaily:

“We will show you the way, or you’ll get lost.”

When the sisters paused at the gate, Elisaveta thought that some one was looking at her, out of a hiding-place, with a gaze of astonishment. In perplexity, strange and distressing, she looked around her. Behind the hedge in the bushes a small boy and a small girl were hiding. They were like the others she had seen here, except that they were very white, as though the kisses of the stern Dragon floating in the hot sky had left no traces upon their tender skin. Both the little boy and the little girl were staring with a motionless but attentive gaze. Their chaste look seemed to penetrate into the very depth of one’s soul; this rather disconcerted Elisaveta. She whispered to Elena:

“Look, what strange beings!”

Elena looked in the direction of Elisaveta’s glance and said indifferently:

“Monsters!”

Elisaveta was astonished at her sister’s observation—the faces of these hiding children seemed to her like the faces of praying angels.

By this time the children who had escorted the sisters ran back, jostling each other and laughing. Only one boy remained with them. He opened the gate and waited for the sisters to go out so that he could shut it again. Elisaveta quietly asked him:

“Who are these?”

With a light movement of her head she indicated the bushes, where the boy and the girl were hiding. The cheerful urchin looked in the direction of her glance, then at her, and said:

“There’s no one there.”

And actually no one was now visible in the bushes. Elisaveta persisted:

“But I did see a boy and a girl there. Both were quite white, not at all brown like the rest of you. They stood ever so quietly and looked.”

The cheery, dark-eyed lad looked attentively at Elisaveta, frowned slightly, lowered his eyes, reflected, then again eyed the sisters attentively and sadly, and said:

“In the main building, where Giorgiy Sergeyevitch lives, there are more of these quiet children. They are never with us. They are quiet ones. They do not play. They have been ill. It’s likely they haven’t improved yet. I don’t know. They are kept separately.”

The boy said this slowly and thoughtfully, as if he were astonished because there, in the house of the master, were other children, quiet ones, who did not join in their play. Suddenly he shook his head lustily, banishing, as it were, unaccustomed thoughts, then took off his cap and exclaimed cheerily and with some tenderness:

“A happy journey, darlings! Follow this footpath.”

He made an obeisance and ran off. The sisters were quite alone now. They went on in the direction given them by the boy. A quiet vale opened up before them, and in the distance a white wall was visible, which concealed Trirodov’s house. They continued their way towards the house. In front of them, keeping close to the bushes, walked a boy in a white dress; he appeared to be showing them the way.

It was very quiet. High above them, protecting himself from the human eye by dark purple shields, the flaming Dragon rested. His look from behind the deceptive, vacillant shields was hot and evil; he poured out his dazzling light, tormented men with it, yet wished them to rejoice in his presence and to compose hymns to him. He wished to rule, and it seemed as though he were motionless, as though he would never decide to retire. But his livid weariness already began to incline him westwards. Still his passion grew, and his kisses were scorching, and his infuriated gaze with its livid purple dimmed the glances of the two girls.

The girls’ glances were seeking—seeking Trirodov’s house.

Trirodov’s house stood about a verst and a half from the edge of the town, not at the end where the dirty and smoky factory buildings squatted, but quite at the other end, along the River Skorodyen, above the town of Skorodozh. This house and the estate attached to it occupied a considerable space, surrounded by a stone wall. One side of the place faced the river, the other the town, the rest adjoined the fields and woods. The house stood in the middle of an old garden. From behind the tall white stone wall the tops of the trees were to be seen, while between them, quite high, two turrets of the house, one somewhat higher than the other, were visible. The sisters felt as if some one in the high turret were looking down upon them.

There were ominous rumours concerning the house even in the days when it belonged to the previous tenant Matov, a kinsman of the Rameyev sisters. It was said that the house was inhabited by ghosts, and by phantoms who had left their graves. There was a footpath close to the house which led across the northern part of the estate, through a wood, to the Krutitsk cemetery. In the town they called this the footpath of Navii,2 and they were afraid to walk upon it even by day. Many legends grew up around it. The local intelligentsia tried vainly to disprove them. The whole property was sometimes called Navii’s playground. There were some who said that they had seen with their own eyes this enigmatic inscription on the gates: “Three went in, two came out.” This inscription was, of course, no longer there. Now only lightly cut-out figures were to be seen, one under the other: ‘3’ on top, ‘2’ lower, and ‘1’ at the bottom.

All the evil rumours and warnings did not prevent Giorgiy Sergeyevitch Trirodov from buying the house. He made changes in it, and then settled here after his comparatively brief educational career had been rudely cut short.

It took a long time to rebuild and transform the house. The high walls prevented any one from seeing what was being done there. This aroused the curiosity of the townsfolk and caused all sorts of malicious gossip. The working men did not belong to the place, but were brought from a distance. Dark and short and rather gruff-looking, they did not understand the local speech, and seldom showed themselves in the streets.

“They are wicked and dark” was said about them in the town. “They carry knives about with them, and dig underground passages in Navii’s playground. He himself is clean-shaven like a German, and he’s imported these foreign earth-diggers.”

“I like that red-haired instructress, Nadezhda Vestchezerova,” said Elena.

She looked searchingly at her sister.

“Yes, she’s very sincere,” answered Elisaveta. ‘“A fine girl.”

“They are all charming,” said Elena with greater assurance.

“Yes,” observed Elisaveta, with indecision in her voice. “But there is that other—the one that ran away from us—there’s something I don’t like about her. Perhaps it’s a slight veneer of hypocrisy.”

“Why do you say so?” asked Elena.

“I simply feel it. She smiles too pleasantly, too lovingly. She seems in every way phlegmatic, yet she tries to appear animated. Her words come rather easily sometimes, and she exaggerates.”

It was quiet in the garden behind the stone wall. This was Kirsha’s free hour. But he could not play, though he tried to.

Little Kirsha, Trirodov’s son, whose mother had died not long before, was dark and thin. He had a very mobile face and restless dark eyes. He was dressed like the boys in the wood. He was quite restless to-day. He felt sad without knowing why. He felt as if some invisible being were drawing him on, calling to him in an inaudible whisper, demanding something—what? And who was it approaching their house? Why? Friend or foe? It was a stranger—yet curiously intimate.

At that moment, when the sisters were taking leave of the children in the wood, Kirsha felt especially perturbed. In the far corner of the garden he saw a boy in white dress; he ran up to him. They spoke long and quietly. Then Kirsha ran to his father.

Giorgiy Sergeyevitch Trirodov was all alone at home. He was lying on the sofa, reading a book by Wilde.

Trirodov was forty years old. He was slender and erect. His short-trimmed hair and clean-shaven face made him look very young. Only on closer scrutiny it was possible to detect the many grey hairs, the wrinkles on the forehead around the eyes. His face was pale. His broad forehead seemed very large—it was partly due to a narrow chin, lean cheeks, and baldness.

The room where Trirodov was reading—his study—was large, bright, and simple, with a white, unpainted floor as smooth as a mirror. The walls were lined with open bookcases. In the wall opposite the windows, between the bookcases, a narrow space was left, large enough for a man to stand in. It gave the impression of a door being there, hidden by hangings. In the middle of the room stood a very large table, upon which lay books, papers, and several strange objects—hexahedral prisms of an unfamiliar substance, heavy and solid in appearance, dark red in colour, with purple, blue, grey, and black spots, and with veins running across it.

Kirsha knocked on the door and entered—quiet, small, troubled. Trirodov looked at him anxiously. Kirsha said:

“There are two young women in the wood. Such an inquisitive pair. They have been looking over our colony. Now they’d like to come here to take a look round.”

Trirodov let the pale green ribbon with a lightly stamped pattern fall upon the page he was reading and laid the book on the small table at his side. He then took Kirsha by the hand, drew him close, and looked attentively at him, with a slight stir in his eyes; then said quietly:

“You’ve been asking questions of those quiet boys again.”

Kirsha grew red, but stood erect and calm, Trirodov continued to reproach him:

“How often have I told you that this is wicked. It is bad for you and for them.”

“It’s all the same to them,” said Kirsha quietly.

“How do you know?” asked Trirodov.

Kirsha shrugged his shoulders and said obstinately:

“Why are they here? What are they to us?”

Trirodov turned away, then rose abruptly, went to the window, and looked gloomily into the garden. Clearly something was agitating his consciousness, something that needed deciding. Kirsha quietly walked up to him, stepping softly upon the white, warm floor with his sunburnt graceful feet, high in instep, and with long, beautiful, well-formed toes. He touched his father on the shoulder, quietly rested his sunburnt hand there, and said:

“You know, daddy, that I seldom do this, only when I must. I felt very much troubled to-day. I knew that something would happen.”

“What will happen?” asked his father.

“I have a feeling,” said Kirsha with a pleading voice, “that you must let them in to us—these inquisitive girls.”

Trirodov looked very attentively at his son and smiled. Kirsha said gravely:

“The elder one is very charming. In some way she is like mother. But the other is also nice.”

“What brings them here?” again asked Trirodov. “They might have waited until their elders brought them here.”

Kirsha smiled, sighed lightly, and said thoughtfully, shrugging his small shoulders:

“All women are curious. What’s to be done with them?”

Smiling now joyously, now gravely, Trirodov asked:

“And will mother not come to us?”

“Oh, if she only came, if only for one little minute!” exclaimed Kirsha.

“What are we to do with these girls?” asked Trirodov.

“Invite them in, show them the house,” replied Kirsha.

“And the quiet children?” quietly asked Trirodov.

“The quiet children also like the elder one,” answered Kirsha.

“And who are they, these girls?” asked Trirodov.

“They are our neighbours, the Rameyevs,” said Kirsha.

Trirodov smiled again and said:

“Yes, one can understand why they are so curious.”

He frowned, went to the table, put his hand on one of the dark, heavy prisms and picked it up cautiously, and again carefully put it back in its place, saying at the same time to Kirsha:

“Go, then, and meet them and bring them here.”

Kirsha, growing animated, asked:

“By the door or through the grotto?”

“Yes, bring them through the dark passage, underground.”

Kirsha went out. Trirodov was left alone. He opened the drawer of his writing-table, took out a strangely shaped flagon of green glass filled with a dark fluid, and looked in the direction of the secret door. At that instant it opened quietly and easily. A pale, quiet boy entered and looked at Trirodov with his dispassionate and innocent, but understanding eyes.

Trirodov went up to him. A reproach was ripe on his tongue but he could not say it. Pity and tenderness clung to his lips. Silently he gave the strange-shaped flagon to the boy. The boy went out quietly.