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“Do you remember,” said Natacha, “long before that, when we were no bigger than my hand, my uncle called us into his room, where it was quite dark, and suddenly we saw—-“

“A negro!” interrupted Nicolas, smiling at her recollection. “To be sure. I can see him now; and to this day I wonder whether it was a dream or a reality, or mere fancy invented afterwards.”

“He had white teeth and stared at us with his black eyes.”

“Do you remember him, Sonia?”

“Yes, yes–but very dimly.”

“But papa and mamma have always declared that no negro ever came to the house. And the eggs; do you remember the eggs we used to roll up at Easter; and one day how two little grinning old women came up through the floor and began to spin round the table?”

“Of course. And how papa used to put on his fur coat and fire off his gun from the balcony. And don t you remember—-?” And so they went on recalling, one after the other, not the bitter memories of old age, but the bright pictures of early childhood, which float and fade on a distant horizon of poetic vagueness, midway between reality and dreams. Sonia remembered being frightened once at the sight of Nicolas in his braided jacket, and her nurse promising her that she should some day have a frock trimmed from top to bottom.

“And they told me you had been found in the garden under a cabbage,” said Natacha. “I dared not say it was not true, but it puzzled me tremendously.”

A door opened, and a woman put in her head, exclaiming, “Mademoiselle, mademoiselle, they have fetched the cock!”

“I do not want it now; send it away again, Polia.” said Natacha.

Dimmler, who had meanwhile come into the room, went up to the harp, which stood in a corner, and in taking off the cover made the strings ring discordantly.

“Edward Karlovitch, play my favorite nocturne–Field’s,” cried the countess, from the adjoining room.

Dimmler struck a chord. “How quiet you young people are,” he said, addressing them.

“Yes, we are studying philosophy,” said Natacha, and they went on talking of their dreams.

Dimmler had no sooner begun his nocturne than Natacha, crossing the room on tiptoe, seized the wax-light that was burning on the table and carried it into the next room; then she stole back to her seat, it was now quite dark in the larger room, especially in their corner, but the silvery moonbeams came in at the wide windows and lay in broad sheets on the floor.

“Do you know,” whispered Natacha, while Dimmler, after playing the nocturne, let his fingers wander over the strings, uncertain what to play next, “when I go on remembering one thing beyond another, I go back so far, so far, that at last I remember things that happened before I was born, and—-“

“That is metempsychosis,” interrupted Sonia, with a reminiscence of her early lessons. “The Egyptians believed that our souls had once inhabited the bodies of animals, and would return to animals again after our death.”

“I do not believe that,” said Natacha, still in a low voice, though the music had ceased. “But I am quite sure that we were angels once, somewhere there beyond, or, perhaps, even here; and that is the reason we remember a previous existence.”

“May I join the party?” asked Dimmler, coming towards them.

“If we were once angels, how is it that we have fallen lower?”

“Lower? Who says that it is lower? Who knows what I was?” Natacha retorted with full conviction. “Since the soul is immortal, and I am to live forever in the future, I must have existed in the past, so I have eternity behind me, too.”

“Yes; but it is very difficult to conceive of that eternity,” said Dimmler, whose ironical smile had died away.

“Why?” asked Natacha. “After to-day comes to-morrow, and then the day after, and so on forever; yesterday has been, to-morrow will be—-“