The sisters learnt afterwards that they more often walked about naked here than in their clothes.
The radiantly sad Nadezhda said to them:
“To lull the beast to sleep and to awaken the human being—that is the reason of our nakedness.”
The dark, black-haired Maria said with ecstasy:
“We have bared our feet in order to come in closer contact with the earth; we have become simple and happy, like people in the first garden. We have discarded our clothes in order to come closer to the elements. Caressed by these, clothed by the fire of the sun’s rays, we have discovered the human being in us. This being is not the uncouth beast thirsting for blood, or the townsman counting his profits—it is the human being, clean in body and alive with love.”
So natural, indispensable, and inevitable seemed the nakedness of these young, beautiful bodies that it appeared rather stupid to put on one’s clothes afterwards. The sisters joined in with the naked dancers, and went into the water and lay on the grass under the trees. It was pleasant to feel the beauty, the grace, and the agility of their bodies among these other twirling, beautiful, strong bodies.
Elisaveta’s observant glance detected two types among the girl instructresses. There were the rapturous ones and the dissembling ones.
The rapturous ones gave themselves up with a bacchic joy to a life lived in the embrace of chaste nature: they fervently carried out all the rites of the colony, joyously divested themselves of all fear and shame, made great efforts and self-denials; and they laughed and they flamed, overcome by a passionate thirst of noble actions and of love—a thirst which not all the waters of this poor earth can quench. Among this number were the sad Nadezhda and the ecstatic Maria.
The others, the dissembling ones, were those who had sold their time and had parted with all their habits, inclinations, and proprieties for money. They pretended that they loved children, simple life, and bodily beauty. They did not find it hard to dissemble, for the others served them as excellent models.
This time the sisters were shown the buildings of the colony, or at least as much of them as they could see in an hour, and all sorts of things made by the children—books and pictures—things that belonged to this or that child. They were shown the fruit-orchard and the garden-beds, above which the bees buzzed; and the air was fresh with the honeyed aroma of flowers half lost in the tender softness of profuse grasses.