Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume X).djvu/285

Rh downcast eyes, that looked somehow smaller, strayed rapidly in happy confusion from side to side.

She saw the rose, snatched it up, glanced at its crushed, muddy petals, glanced at me, and her eyes, brought suddenly to a standstill, were bright with tears.

'What are you crying for?' I asked.

'Why, see this rose. Look what has happened to it.'

Then I thought fit to utter a profound remark.

'Your tears will wash away the mud,' I pronounced with a significant expression. 'Tears do not wash, they burn,' she answered. And turning to the hearth she flung the rose into the dying flame.

'Fire burns even better than tears,' she cried with spirit; and her lovely eyes, still bright with tears, laughed boldly and happily.

I saw that she too had been in the fire.

April 1878.

dirt, on stinking wet straw under the shelter of a tumble-down barn, turned in haste