He beat his head against the edge of the table and he wept with anguish, as one who was weeping for the first time. Then he raised his head, confident that a miracle would come to pass, that his wife would speak and would pity him. “My love!” With his entire big body he drew himself toward his wife--and met the gaze of those gray eyes. There was neither compassion in them, nor anger. It was possible his wife had forgiven him, but in her eyes there was neither pity nor anger. They were dumb and silent. * * * * * And silent was the entire dark, deserted house. GORKI THE BITTER Some day we shall be indebted to the clear-visioned critic who will expound for us the true place of the unpleasant, the terrible, even the horrible, in fiction; and the study would not be complete without a thorough-going examination of Russian literature generally, and the writings of Maxim Gorki in particular. Such an inquiry--which I must only touch upon--would doubtless focus upon two factors of importance: the one a primary cause--the nature of the author as conditioned by self, environment, and nationality; the other a secondary cause--the ultimate purposes of fiction. Phrased differently, we have the two elements: what an author writes because he is what and where he is, and what he writes quite deliberately. Reference has already been made, in these introductory studies, to the sombre, hopeless, and even tragic tone of Russian life--a tone sounded deeply in its literature. In fact, the broader the sweep of view, the more instances stand forth to support the statement that all Muscovite art feels the same impulse--witness in an exemplary and typical way the paintings of Verestchagin and the music of Tschaikovsky. It is an inviting theme, this one of why one nation should drink fiery vodka, another phlegmatic beer, and yet another light wine. Are the national characteristics which plainly go with drinks and foods and pleasures causes, in the final analysis, or effects? Do servitude and stolidity and hopelessness on the one hand, and thin-nostriled freedom and lofty spirit on the other, arise from forces which the historian may trace clearly to their political well-springs, or are there certain imponderable potencies in the air of different lands which in the very beginning of things instilled a spirit of fatalism into the Moslem, nihilism into the Russian, emotionalism into the French, and a nervous need for action into the American? When outward national conditions change, or when nations are transplanted, precisely what is it in climate that breeds essentially the same strain cycle after cycle?