We had, however, a _pood_ of grapes from one of our gardens
this year."
The moon now bathed her yellow reflection in the mysterious sea, and
we sat and looked at it together.
"Vasia, my son, who has taken his musical degree, will stay up all
night to look at this sight," said my hostess. "It moves something in
his soul."
It moved something in mine, and yet seemed strangely alien to the tale
I was hearing. That moon had flung its mystery over an Eastern
world, and it seemed an irrelevance beside the fortunes of a modern
watering-place.
Varvara Ilinitchna went on to tell me of her early days, and how
she and her husband had been poor. Alexander Fed'otch had taught in
schools and received little money. Their two sons were never well.
They had often wept over burdens too hard to bear.
One season, however, there came a change in their life and they became
prosperous. They prayed to be rich, and God heard their prayer.
"We owe the change in our fortunes to a famous Ikon," said Varvara
Ilinitchna. "It happened in this way. Alexander Fed'otch had an old
friend who, after serving thirty years as a clerk in an office,
suddenly gave up and took to the mountains. He was a wise man and knew
much of life, and it was through his wisdom that we sent for the Ikon.
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