Page:The Best continental short stories of and the yearbook of the continental short story 1926.pdf/215

 the little old lady, busily engaged, smiled at him tenderly from time to time.

When later we left, accompanied as far as the road by our hosts, the pastor wrapped a shawl round his wife’s shoulders, murmuring gently, “Kata darling!”

While Vivostchka was admiring the birch trees and perhaps thinking of Tourgueneff; a verse of Pouchkine’s suddenly came into my mind:

As Philemon and Baucis stood waving to us at the crossroads we four modern women felt something of the bitterness of life. There was a woman who had solved its enigma. Despite all our questions we had forgotten to ask her the most important of all! But would she have known how to explain by what sun-lit pathway she had reached this glowing autumn?

In after years, whoever finds the tombstone of the pastor of Zablati will discover there two united hearts, even though they be not engraved by human hands.