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----"