snubnosed young fellow in a gay print shirt. 'Get along, you swell!'
said Uvar Ivanovitch. The boat pushed off. The young men took up the
oars, but Insarov was the oniy one of them who could row. Shubin
suggested that they should sing some Russian song in chorus, and
struck up: 'Down the river Volga' . . . Bersenyev, Zoya, and even
Anna Vassilyevna, joined in--Insarov could not sing--but they did not
keep together; at the third verse the singers were all wrong. Only
Bersenyev tried to go on in the bass, 'Nothing on the waves is seen,'
but he, too, was soon in difficulties. The boatmen looked at one
another and grinned in silence.

'Eh?' said Shubin, turning to them, 'the gentlefolks can't sing,
you say?' The boy in the print shirt only shook his head. 'Wait a
little snubnose,' retorted Shubin, 'we will show you. Zoya
Nikitishna, sing us _Le lac_ of Niedermeyer. Stop rowing!' The wet
oars stood still, lifted in the air like wings, and their splash died
away with a tuneful drip; the boat drifted on a little, then stood
still, rocking lightly on the water like a swan. Zoya affected to
refuse at first. . . . '_Allons_' said Anna Vassilyevna genially. . . .
Zoya took off her hat and began to sing: '_O lac, l'annee a peine a
fini sa carriere_!'

Her small, but pure voice, seemed to dart over the surface of the
lake; every word echoed far off in the woods; it sounded as though some
one were singing there, too, in a distinct, but mysterious and
unearthly voice. When Zoya finished, a loud bravo was heard from an
arbour near the bank, from which emerged several red-faced Germans who
were picnicking at Tsaritsino. Several of them had their coats off,
their ties, and even their waistcoats; and they shouted '_bis!_' with
such unmannerly insistence that Anna Vassilyevna told the boatmen to