What was left clear of this chaotic jumble in her soul might quite properly be called a _tabula rasa_. There was scarcely a thing to be read in it; it certainly offered no possibility of finding a starting-point in her for better things. Whatever preparation she had had inspired not love for work but love for a "society" life, the desire to be surrounded by admirers and listen to their flattery, the desire to plunge into the social din, glamor and whirlwind. If she had listened to herself, she would have discovered that even in Pogorelka, when just beginning to make plans for a life of honest toil as a deliverance from Egyptian bondage, she could have caught herself dreaming not so much of work as of being surrounded by a society of congenial people, frittering her time away in empty talk. Of course, the people of her dreams were clever, and their conversation was honest and serious, but the idle side of life was always in the foreground. Poverty was distinguished by neatness, privations amounted merely to a lack of luxuries. So, when her dreams of a life of work came to a head and she was offered a part in one of the provincial theatres, she hesitated little, though the contrast between dream and reality was great. She hastily freshened up her school information about the relations of Helen and Menelaus, supplemented it by some biographical details from the life of the splendid Prince of Tauris and decided that that was quite sufficient to produce _Fair Helen_ and _Episodes from the Life of the Duchess of Herolstein_ in the provincial theatres and at the fairs. To clear her conscience she recalled the words of a student she had met in Moscow who used to exclaim repeatedly, "Sacred Art!" She made this her slogan, because it was the easiest way out, and gave at least outward decorum to the path she had chosen--the path toward which the whole of her being was instinctively tending. The life of an actress upset her. Alone, without the guidance of proper preparation, without a conscious aim, with only a temperament craving for din, glamor, and applause, she soon found herself surrounded by a chaos in which many persons thronged, some coming, others going, without apparent order or connection. There were people of the most diverse characters and views, so that the motives for becoming intimate with this one or that one were not the same. Nevertheless, they were all integral parts of her circle, so that there really could be no question of motives.