often exposed.

The river-bank opposite rose in a slope. There were bushes here;
behind them for a great distance stretched fields of rye, while just
over the edge, where the earth and the sky met, were visible the far
huts of the suburban village. Peasant boys passed by on the bank. They
did not look at the bathing women. But a schoolboy, who had come a
long way from the other end of the town, sat on his heels behind the
bushes. He called himself an ass because he had not brought his
camera. But he consoled himself with the thought:

"To-morrow I'll surely bring it."

The schoolboy quickly looked at his watch in order to make a note of
the time the girls went out bathing. He knew them, and often came to
their house to see his friend, their relative. Elena, the younger, now
appealed most to him; she was plump, cheerful, white, rosy, her hands
and feet were small. He did not like the hands and feet of the elder
sister, Elisaveta--they seemed to him to be too large and too red. Her
face also was red, very sunburnt, and she was altogether quite large.

"Oh well," he reflected, "she is certainly well formed, you can't deny
her that."

About a year had now passed since the retired _privat-docent_
Giorgiy Sergeyevitch Trirodov, a doctor of chemistry, had settled in
the town of Skorodozh.[1] From the very first he had caused much talk
in the town, mostly unsympathetic. It was quite natural that the two
rose-yellow, black-haired girls in the water should also talk of him.
They splashed about gaily, and as they raised jewel-like spray with