She lifted her eyes to him.... 'Sanin, are you able to forget?'

Sanin recollected what had happened yesterday ... in the carriage. 'What is that—a question ... or a reproach?'

'I have never in my life reproached any one for anything. Do you believe in magic?'

'What?'

'In magic?—you know what is sung of in our ballads—our Russian peasant ballads?'

'Ah! That's what you're speaking of,' Sanin said slowly.

'Yes, that's it. I believe in it ... and you will believe in it.'

'Magic is sorcery ...' Sanin repeated, 'Anything in the world is possible. I used not to believe in it—but I do now. I don't know myself.'

Maria Nikolaevna thought a moment and looked about her. 'I fancy this place seems familiar to me. Look, Sanin, behind that bushy oak—is there a red wooden cross, or not?'

Sanin moved a few steps to one side. 'Yes, there is.' Maria Nikolaevna smiled. 'Ah, that's good! I know where we are. We haven't got lost as yet. What's that tapping? A wood-cutter?'

Sanin looked into the thicket. 'Yes ... there's a man there chopping up dry branches.'

'I must put my hair to rights,' said Maria Nikolaevna. 'Else he'll see me and be shocked.' She took off her hat and began plaiting up her long hair, silently and seriously. Sanin stood facing her ... All the lines of her graceful limbs could be clearly seen through the dark folds of her habit, dotted here and there with tufts of moss.

One of the horses suddenly shook itself behind Sanin's back; he himself started and trembled from head to foot. Everything was in confusion within him, his nerves were strung up like harpstrings. He might well say he did not know himself.... He really was bewitched. His whole being was filled full of one thing ... one idea, one desire. Maria Nikolaevna turned a keen look upon him.

'Come, now everything's as it should be,' she observed, putting on her hat. 'Won't you sit down? Here! No, wait a minute ... don't sit down! What's that?'

Over the tree-tops, over the air of the forest, rolled a dull rumbling.

'Can it be thunder?'

'I think it really is thunder,' answered Sanin.

'Oh, this is a treat, a real treat! That was the only thing wanting!' The dull rumble was heard a second time, rose, and fell in a crash. 'Bravo! Bis! Do you remember I spoke of the Æneid yesterday? They too were overtaken by a storm in the forest, you know. We must be off, though.' She rose swiftly to her feet. 'Bring me my horse.... Give me your hand. There, so. I'm not heavy.'

She hopped like a bird into the saddle. Sanin too mounted his horse.

'Are you going home?' he asked in an unsteady voice.

'Home indeed!' she answered deliberately and picked up the reins. 'Follow me,' she commanded almost roughly. She came out on to the road and passing the red cross, rode down into a hollow, clambered up again to a cross road, turned to the right and again up the mountainside.... She obviously knew where the path led, and the path led farther and farther into the heart of the forest. She said nothing and did not look round; she moved imperiously in front and humbly and submissively he followed without a spark of will in his sinking heart. Rain began to fall in spots. She quickened her horse's pace, and he did not linger behind her. At last through the dark green of the young firs under an overhanging grey rock, a tumbledown little hut peeped out at him, with a low door in its wattle wall.... Maria Nikolaevna made her mare push through the fir bushes, leaped off her, and appearing suddenly at the entrance to the hut, turned to Sanin, and whispered 'Æneas.'