“A miracle happened in the village yesterday,” she said. “The lame woman Pelagea has been ill the whole year. No doctors or medicines did her any good; but yesterday an old woman came and whispered something over her, and her illness passed away.”

“That’s nothing much,” I said. “You mustn’t look for miracles only among sick people and old women. Isn’t health a miracle? And life itself? Whatever is beyond understanding is a miracle.”

“And aren’t you afraid of what is beyond understanding?”

“No. Phenomena I don’t understand I face boldly, and am not overwhelmed by them. I am above them. Man ought to recognise himself as superior to lions, tigers, stars, superior to everything in nature, even what seems miraculous and is beyond his understanding, or else he is not a man, but a mouse afraid of everything.”

Genya believed that as an artist I knew a very great deal, and could guess correctly what I did not know. She longed for me to initiate her into the domain of the Eternal and the Beautiful⁠—into that higher world in which, as she imagined, I was quite at home. And she talked to me of God, of the eternal life, of the miraculous. And I, who could never admit that my self and my imagination would be lost forever after death, answered: “Yes, men are immortal”; “Yes, there is eternal life in store for us.” And she listened, believed, and did not ask for proofs.

As we were going home she stopped suddenly and said:

“Our Lida is a remarkable person⁠—isn’t she? I love her very dearly, and would be ready to give my life for her any minute. But tell me”⁠—Genya touched my sleeve with her finger⁠—“tell me, why do you always argue with her? Why are you irritated?”

“Because she is wrong.”

Genya shook her head and tears came into her eyes.