tell me, kind master, why it is that even in the presence of great
happiness a man cannot forget his grief?" Deacon Nicholas is dead,
who alone in the monastery could write prayers that touched the
heart. And of them all, only Jerome read his "akaphists." "He used
to open the door of his cell and make me sit by him, and we used
to read....His face was compassionate and tender--" In the
monastery the countryside is crowding to hear the Easter service.
The choir sings "Lift up thine eyes, O Zion, and behold." But
Nicholas is dead, and there is none to penetrate the meaning of
the Easter canon, except Jerome who toils all night on the ferry
because they had forgotten him. In the morning, the traveler
recrosses the Goltva. Jerome is still on the ferry. He rests his
dim, timid eyes upon them all, and then fixes his gaze on the rosy
face of a merchant's wife. There is little of the man in that long
gaze. He is seeking in the woman's face the sweet and gentle
features of his lost friend.

The American editor refuses such a story. There is no plot here,
he says, and no "punch." He is wrong, although an imperfect
abstract like mine cannot convict him. For the narrative presents
an unforgettable portrait of wistful hero-worship, set in the dim
mists of a Russian river against the barbaric splendor of an
Easter midnight mass. To force a climax upon this poignant story
would be to spoil it. And when it appears, as it will, in reprint,
in some periodical anthology of current fiction, it will not fail
to impress American readers.

But the American editor must have a climax which drives home what
he thinks the public wants. If it is not true, so much the worse
for truth. If it falsifies the story, well, a lying story with a