Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume XIV).djvu/84

Rh silence, 'do you believe in the possibility of calling up the dead?'

Sophie softly shook her head.

'There are no dead.'

'What?'

'There are no dead souls; they are undying and can always appear, when they like. They are always about us.'

'What? Do you suppose, for instance, that an immortal soul may be at this moment hovering about that garrison major with the red nose?'

'Why not? The sunlight falls on him and his nose, and is not the sunlight, all light, from God? And what does external appearance matter? To the pure all things are pure! Only to find a teacher, to find a leader!'

'But excuse me, excuse me,' I put in, not, I must own, without malicious intent. 'You want a leader but what is your priest for?'

Sophie looked coldly at me.

'You mean to laugh at me, I suppose. My priestly father tells me what I ought to do; but what I want is a leader who would show me himself in action how to sacrifice one's self!'

She raised her eyes towards the ceiling. With her childlike face, and that expression of immobile absorption, of secret, continual perplexity, she reminded me of the pre-raphaelite Madonnas.

'I have read somewhere,' she went on, not