THE SWEET-SCENTED NAME
when her husband had died, leaving her so soon after their wedded life had begun.
How terrible his death had been! One fine spring morning he had gone out of the house quite well and happy, and before evening he had been brought home dead—run over on the highway. It had seemed then to Elèna Nikolàevna that life could never more bring her happiness. She might have died from grief, but the fingers of her little child drew her back to life, and in the old dreams of her childhood she was able to find consolation. Yet how difficult it had been to live; how poor she had been!
The summer after her husband's death she had spent in the country with her younger sister and her own little child. And to-day she remembered with a marvellous distinctness one bright day on which had happened something delightful and strange—something apparently insignificant in itself, yet shedding upon her soul a wonderful light, illuminating all the rest of her life. On that wonderful day, long past, had happened that which ever afterwards made Elèna Nikolàevna as proudly calm as if she had been crowned queen of a great and glorious land.
But this well-remembered day had dawned
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