joyful excitement, I felt unbearably sore on Ieronim's account. Why
did they not send someone to relieve him? Why could not someone of
less feeling and less susceptibility go on the ferry? 'Lift up thine
eyes, O Sion, and look around,' they sang in the choir, 'for thy
children have come to thee as to a beacon of divine light from north
and south, and from east and from the sea. . . .'

I looked at the faces; they all had a lively expression of triumph,
but not one was listening to what was being sung and taking it in,
and not one was 'holding his breath.' Why was not Ieronim released?
I could fancy Ieronim standing meekly somewhere by the wall, bending
forward and hungrily drinking in the beauty of the holy phrase. All
this that glided by the ears of the people standing by me he would
have eagerly drunk in with his delicately sensitive soul, and would
have been spell-bound to ecstasy, to holding his breath, and there
would not have been a man happier than he in all the church. Now
he was plying to and fro over the dark river and grieving for his
dead friend and brother.

The wave surged back. A stout smiling monk, playing with his rosary
and looking round behind him, squeezed sideways by me, making way
for a lady in a hat and velvet cloak. A monastery servant hurried
after the lady, holding a chair over our heads.

I came out of the church. I wanted to have a look at the dead
Nikolay, the unknown canticle writer. I walked about the monastery
wall, where there was a row of cells, peeped into several windows,
and, seeing nothing, came back again. I do not regret now that I
did not see Nikolay; God knows, perhaps if I had seen him I should
have lost the picture my imagination paints for me now. I imagine