“Shall we play at making words in order to understand them only us?” “First of all, try to speak good grammar.” “My mamma can speak French, English, Roumanian, Turkish, Polish, Italoscope, Perroquese and Xixitou.” All this was said very fast, in a kind of lyrical ecstasy. Bronja began to laugh. “Oh, Boris, why are you always saying things that aren’t true?” “Why do you never believe what I say?” “I believe it when it’s true.” “How do you know when it’s true? I believed _you_ the other day when you told me about the angels. I say, Bronja, do you think that, if I were to pray very hard, I should see them too?” “Perhaps you’ll see them if you get out of the habit of telling lies, and if God wants to show them to you; but God won’t show them to you if you pray to him only for that. There are heaps of beautiful things we should see if we weren’t too naughty.” “Bronja, you aren’t naughty; that’s why you can see the angels. I shall always be naughty.” “Why don’t you try not to be? Shall we go to--” some place whose name I didn’t know--“and pray together to God and the Blessèd Virgin to help you not to be naughty?” “Yes. No; listen--let’s take a stick; you shall hold one end and I the other. I will shut my eyes, and I promise not to open them until we get to the place.” They walked away, and as they were going down the terrace steps I heard Boris again: “Yes, no, not that end. Wait till I’ve wiped it.” “Why?” “I’ve touched it.” Mme. Sophroniska came up to me as I was sitting alone, just finishing my early breakfast and wondering how I could enter into conversation with her. I was surprised to see that she was holding my last book in her hand; she asked me with the most affable smile whether it was the author whom she had the pleasure of speaking to; then she immediately launched upon a long appreciation of my book. Her judgment--both praise and criticism--seemed to me more intelligent than what I am accustomed to hearing, though her point of view is anything but literary. She told me she was almost exclusively interested in questions of psychology and in anything that may shed a new light on the human soul. “But how rare it is,” she added, “to find a poet, or dramatist or novelist, who is not satisfied with a ready-made psychology--” the only kind, I told her, that satisfies their readers. Little Boris has been confided to her for the holidays by his mother. I took care not to let her know my reasons for being interested in him.