That was our last talk. “I have done a great deal of thinking in my loneliness,” she said; “indeed, I have done more than thinking; I have done some writing,” and she smiled at me with an air of embarrassment that gave her aged face a sweet, wistful expression. “I have put down my thoughts about all these things, or rather, the outcome of my experiences. I kept a diary before I was married, and afterwards too, for a time. But I gave it up later, when it all began, about ten years ago.” She did not say what had begun, but I knew that she meant the strained relations with her older children, the misunderstandings, and the contentions. She had had the entire control of the family estate after her husband’s death. “In looking through my possessions here I found my old diaries and reread them. There is a good deal in them that is silly, but there is a good deal that is good, and”⁠—again the same smile⁠—“instructive, too. I could not make up my mind at first whether to burn them or not, so I asked Father Nicodim, and he said, ‘Burn them.’ But that was all nonsense, you know. He could not understand. So I didn’t burn them.” How well I recognised her characteristic illogical consistency. She was obedient to Father Nicodim in most things, and had settled near the monastery to be under his guidance; but when she thought that his judgment was irrational, she did what seemed best to her.