“Get married? That is not so easy. I will tell you a conversation I once had on the subject with my small nephew Seryozha. He is my godson, and will probably be my heir. We are enormous friends. When I go to stay in the country with his mother, my cousin, Seryozha never leaves me for a moment, and if only you could hear our conversations! He has the straightforward, logical, fearless intelligence of most small boys of his age. And so, on one occasion, he announced to me that as soon as ever he grows up, he will get married, just because he wants to have little children, whom he likes. ‘There is only one trouble,’ he added, very seriously, ‘I shall have to live all the time with my wife; there is no escape.’ He said it so well, that I gave him a hearty kiss. You see, although I am forty, and Seryozha is only eight, he explained to me quite clearly why I do not marry.” “The poor wife!” laughed Irene. On the following day, Gzhatski left Assisi. Just as he was getting into the cab to go to the station, he suddenly turned to Irene, who was there to say good-bye, and exclaimed: “By the way, I had quite forgotten. I brought you a present from Rome. Please accept it,” and he took a book from his pocket, and handed it to her. “What is it?” stammered Irene vaguely. “It is a Life of St. Amulfia. Like you, she found that her vocation was to enter a convent. I thought that, as a future nun, it might be interesting and useful to you to know something of her convent life.” Irene accepted this gift somewhat mistrustfully. It seemed suspicious, especially as Gzhatski obstinately avoided meeting her glance, while an ill-concealed smile trembled on his lips. Irene went back to her favourite terrace, and for a long time watched the cab going down the hill, raising a cloud of dust. A suspicion arose in her heart, that Gzhatski had come to Assisi exclusively with the purpose of giving her this book, and she began to read it with great interest. X Saint Amulfia lived in the seventeenth century. Her parents were French _petits bourgeois_, uneducated, poor, almost peasants. From her earliest childhood, she was greatly attracted by convent life, and always nursed the dream of one day becoming a nun. Her relations tried to dissuade her from this project, and wished her to marry. Amulfia, however, found all men repulsive, and the very thought of marriage filled her with horror and disgust. For a long time, lacking the dower without which no one is accepted in Catholic convents, she was unable to join the order she had chosen. At last, however, after the death of her parents, their small capital being divided among the children, she took her portion to the convent, and was received as a novice.