‘There is a saintly man living here called Vassily,’ she observed; ‘I wondered whether it was he.’ ‘Saintliness has nothing to do with this,’ I remarked; ‘it’s simply the action of magnetism--a fact of interest for doctors and students of science.’ I proceeded to expound my views on the peculiar force called magnetism, on the possibility of one man’s will being brought under the influence of another’s will, and so on; but my explanations--which were, it is true, somewhat confused--seemed to make no impression on her. Sophie listened, dropping her clasped hands on her knees with a fan lying motionless in them; she did not play with it, she did not move her fingers at all, and I felt that all my words rebounded from her as from a statue of stone. She heard them, but clearly she had her own convictions, which nothing could shake or uproot. ‘You can hardly admit miracles!’ I cried. ‘Of course I admit them,’ she answered calmly. ‘And how can one help admitting them? Are not we told in the gospel that who has but a grain of faith as big as a mustard seed, he can remove mountains? One need only have faith--there will be miracles!’ ‘It seems there is very little faith nowadays,’ I observed; ‘anyway, one doesn’t hear of miracles.’ ‘But yet there are miracles; you have seen one yourself. No; faith is not dead nowadays; and the beginning of faith ...’ ‘The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom,’ I interrupted. ‘The beginning of faith,’ pursued Sophie, nothing daunted, ‘is self-abasement ... humiliation.’ ‘Humiliation even?’ I queried. ‘Yes. The pride of man, haughtiness, presumption--that is what must be utterly rooted up. You spoke of the will--that’s what must be broken.’ I scanned the whole figure of the young girl who was uttering such sentences.... ‘My word, the child’s in earnest, too,’ was my thought. I glanced at our neighbours in the mazurka; they, too, glanced at me, and I fancied that my astonishment amused them; one of them even smiled at me sympathetically, as though he would say: ‘Well, what do you think of our queer young lady? every one here knows what she’s like.’ ‘Have you tried to break your will?’ I said, turning to Sophie again. ‘Every one is bound to do what he thinks right,’ she answered in a dogmatic tone. ‘Let me ask you,’ I began, after a brief silence, ‘do you believe in the possibility of calling up the dead?’ Sophie softly shook her head. ‘There are no dead.’ ‘What?’ ‘There are no dead souls; they are undying and can always appear, when they like.... They are always about us.’ ‘What? Do you suppose, for instance, that an immortal soul may be at this moment hovering about that garrison major with the red nose?’ ‘Why not? The sunlight falls on him and his nose, and is not the sunlight, all light, from God? And what does external appearance matter? To the pure all things are pure! Only to find a teacher, to find a leader!’