She looked attentively at the sisters. Elisaveta thought that she had heard the name somewhere in town—perhaps a tale in connexion with it, she could not remember exactly what. For some reason she did not mention this to Nadezhda. Perhaps it was a tragic history.
This fear of talking about the past occasionally came upon Elisaveta. Who knows what sorrow is hid behind a bright smile, and from what darkness has sprung the blossoming which gives sudden joy to a glance, elusively beautiful and born of unhappy worldly experience?
“Did you find your way in easily?” asked the golden-haired Nadezhda with a friendly but subtle smile. “It’s usually not a simple matter,” she explained.
Elisaveta replied:
“A white boy opened the gate for us. He ran off so quickly that we had not even the time to thank him.”
Nadezhda suddenly ceased smiling.
“Oh yes—he isn’t one of us,” she said falteringly. “They live over there with Trirodov. There are several of them. Wouldn’t you like to have lunch with us?” she asked, cutting short her previous remarks.
Elisaveta suspected that Nadezhda wanted to change the subject.
“We live here all day long, we eat here, we learn here, and we play here—do everything here,” said Nadezhda. “People have built cities to escape the wild beast, but they themselves have become like wild beasts, like savages.”
A bitter note crept into her voice—was it the echo of her past life or was it a thing foreign to her and grafted upon her sensitive nature? She continued: