Both were dressed alike, in short frocks; there was a sash raised rather high at the waist, two other bands crossed each other at the breast, the sleeves were cut quite short at the shoulders.
They walked on farther, and their eyes contemplated gaily and affectionately the half-hidden depths of the valleys, the woods, and the thickets. A simple-hearted devotion to this lovable nature possessed them—it was a sweet and tender devotion. It struck a deep note in Elisaveta, who was in a mood of expectancy. If only she could have met someone deserving of her love whom she might place at the crossings of all earthly and heavenly roads, and to whom she might do obeisance!
This tender devotion aroused young virginal intoxication in Elena also. She felt herself in love—not with anyone in particular, but with everything: as the air loves in the springtime, kissing all in its gladness; as a stream’s currents love when they brush caressingly past boys’ and girls’ pink knees—such were the currents of the stream that suddenly became visible, winding its way among the green in the direction of the River Skorodyen, into which it emptied itself.
The bridge was some way off, and so the sisters waded the stream. There was the delicious coolness of the water round their knees. They remained standing on the bank and admired the porcupines of sand, studded sparsely with tall blades of grass as with spines; also the round pebbles made smooth by the water. Their cooled legs felt for some time afterwards the sensation of the water’s loving caresses.
Just as the running water falls in love with all beauty that is immersed in it, so Elena fell in love with all that her vision evoked for her.
Most of all her love was directed towards Piotr. His love for Elisaveta wounded her with a sweet pain.
The sisters descended into the hollow near Trirodov’s colony, ascended it again to the other side, walked along the already familiar path, and opened the gate—this time it yielded without effort. They entered. Soon they saw a lake before them. The children and their instructresses were bathing. There was a spirit of buoyancy in the brown nakedness disporting itself in the buoyant waters—buoyant were the splashes, the laughter, and the outcries!
The children and the instructresses walked out of the water upon the dry ground and ran naked upon the sand. Their legs, bare and sunburnt, seemed white in the green grass, like young birch-saplings growing out of the earth.
They suddenly caught sight of the sisters, formed a ring of beautiful wet bodies around them, and twirled in a circle at a fast, furious pace. The discarded clothes that lay there close by seemed unnecessary to the sisters at that moment. What, after all, was more beautiful and lovely than the nude, eternal body?
The sisters learnt afterwards that they more often walked about naked here than in their clothes.
The radiantly sad Nadezhda said to them:
“To lull the beast to sleep and to awaken the human being—that is the reason of our nakedness.”
The dark, black-haired Maria said with ecstasy:
“We have bared our feet in order to come in closer contact with the earth; we have become simple and happy, like people in the first garden. We have discarded our clothes in order to come closer to the elements. Caressed by these, clothed by the fire of the sun’s rays, we have discovered the human being in us. This being is not the uncouth beast thirsting for blood, or the townsman counting his profits—it is the human being, clean in body and alive with love.”
So natural, indispensable, and inevitable seemed the nakedness of these young, beautiful bodies that it appeared rather stupid to put on one’s clothes afterwards. The sisters joined in with the naked dancers, and went into the water and lay on the grass under the trees. It was pleasant to feel the beauty, the grace, and the agility of their bodies among these other twirling, beautiful, strong bodies.
Elisaveta’s observant glance detected two types among the girl instructresses. There were the rapturous ones and the dissembling ones.
The rapturous ones gave themselves up with a bacchic joy to a life lived in the embrace of chaste nature: they fervently carried out all the rites of the colony, joyously divested themselves of all fear and shame, made great efforts and self-denials; and they laughed and they flamed, overcome by a passionate thirst of noble actions and of love—a thirst which not all the waters of this poor earth can quench. Among this number were the sad Nadezhda and the ecstatic Maria.
The others, the dissembling ones, were those who had sold their time and had parted with all their habits, inclinations, and proprieties for money. They pretended that they loved children, simple life, and bodily beauty. They did not find it hard to dissemble, for the others served them as excellent models.
This time the sisters were shown the buildings of the colony, or at least as much of them as they could see in an hour, and all sorts of things made by the children—books and pictures—things that belonged to this or that child. They were shown the fruit-orchard and the garden-beds, above which the bees buzzed; and the air was fresh with the honeyed aroma of flowers half lost in the tender softness of profuse grasses.
But the sisters soon left.
They had intended to go home, but somehow they lost their way among the paths and found themselves in sight of Trirodov’s house. Elisaveta espied the high turrets rising above the white wall and recalled Trirodov’s neither young nor handsome face: she became suffused with a sweet passion, as with a rich wine—but it was an
