Afterwards she lay on a couch in her suffocatingly close room; her
hands were clasped behind her head; her bosom swelled. She stretched,
opened her dark pensive eyes wide, compressed her lips, then sank
again into the drowsy langour, lying thus for many hours.

She was twenty, and had grown up free and solitary--with the hunters,
the woods, and the steep and the river--from her birth.

IV

Demid lived on his own plot of ground, which, like the village, stood
on a hill above the river. But here the hill was higher and steeper,
sweeping the edge of the horizon. The wood was nearer, and its grey-
trunked cedars and pines rose from their beds of golden moss to shake
their crests to the stars and stretch their dark-green forest hands
right up to the house. The view was wide and sweeping from here: the
dark, turbulent river, the marsh beyond, the deep-blue billowing
woods fringing the horizon, the heavy lowering sky--all were clearly
visible.

The house, made of huge pines, with timbered walls, plain white-
washed ceilings and floors, was bestrewn with pelts of bears, elks,
wolves, foxes, and ermines. Gunpowder and grape-shot lay on the
tables. In the corners was a medley of lassoes, snares, and
wolftraps. Some rifles hung round the walls. There was a strong
pungent odour, as though all the perfumes of the woods were collected
here. The house contained two rooms and a kitchen.

In the centre of one of the rooms stood a large, rough-hewn table;