" They pounce on the idea, and distort it, and then work it out so pettily and unworthily.

Two or three people, your husband among them, understand all the importance of the thing, but the others simply drag it down.

Yesterday Pravdin wrote to me..." Pravdin was a well-known Panslavist abroad, and Countess Lidia Ivanovna described the purport of his letter.

Then the countess told her of more disagreements and intrigues against the work of the unification of the churches, and departed in haste, as she had that day to be at the meeting of some society and also at the Slavonic committee.

"It was all the same before, of course; but why was it I didn't notice it before?" Anna asked herself.