The schoolboy quickly looked at his watch in order to make a note of the time the girls went out bathing. He knew them, and often came to their house to see his friend, their relative. Elena, the younger, now appealed most to him; she was plump, cheerful, white, rosy, her hands and feet were small. He did not like the hands and feet of the elder sister, Elisaveta--they seemed to him to be too large and too red. Her face also was red, very sunburnt, and she was altogether quite large. “Oh well,” he reflected, “she is certainly well formed, you can’t deny her that.” About a year had now passed since the retired _privat-docent_ Giorgiy Sergeyevitch Trirodov, a doctor of chemistry, had settled in the town of Skorodozh.[1] From the very first he had caused much talk in the town, mostly unsympathetic. It was quite natural that the two rose-yellow, black-haired girls in the water should also talk of him. They splashed about gaily, and as they raised jewel-like spray with their feet they kept up a conversation. “How puzzling it all is!” said Elena, the younger sister. “No one knows where his income comes from, what he does in his house, and why he has this colony of children. There are all sorts of strange rumours about him. It’s certainly a mystery.” Elena’s words reminded Elisaveta of an article she had read lately in a philosophic periodical published at Moscow. Elisaveta had a good memory. She recalled a phrase: “In our world reason will never dominate, and the mysterious will always maintain its place.” She tried to recall more, but suddenly realizing that it would not interest Elena, she gave a sigh and grew silent. Elena gave her a tender, appealing look and said: “When it is so bright you want everything to be as clear as it is around us now.” “Is everything really clear now?” exclaimed Elisaveta. “The sun blinds your eyes, the water flashes and dazzles, and in this ragingly bright world we do not even know whether there isn’t some one a couple of paces away peeping at us.” At this moment the sisters were standing breast-high in the water, near the overgrown bank. The schoolboy who sat on his heels behind the bush heard Elisaveta’s words. He grew cold in his confusion, and began to crawl on all-fours between the bushes, away from the river. He got in among the rye, then perched himself on the rail-fence and pretended to rest, as though he were not even aware of the closeness of the river. But no one had noticed him, as if he were non-existent. The schoolboy sat there a little while, then went home with a vague feeling of disenchantment, injury, and irritation. There was something especially humiliating to him in the thought that to the two girl bathers he was merely a possibility speculated upon but actually non-existent.