not always light upon the most deserving, but comes to those who are unprepared; witness Saul."
"It seems that it isn't to be now," murmured the countess, following with her eyes the movements of the Frenchman. Landau got up and joined them.
"May I listen?" asked he.
"Oh, yes! I did not wish to disturb you," said the countess, tenderly. "Sit down with us."
"The essential thing is not to close one's eyes to the light," continued Alekseï Aleksandrovitch.
"Akh! if you knew what a blessing we experience when we feel His constant presence in our souls," said the Countess Lidia Ivanovna, with an ecstatic smile.
"But a man may feel himself incapable of rising to such a height," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, convinced that the heights of religion were not his forte, but fearing to offend a person who, by one word to Pomorsky, might get him the place that he wanted.
"You mean that sin may prevent him?" asked Lidia Ivanovna. "But that is a mistaken view. For him who believes, there is no more sin. Sin is already redeemed. Pardon," she added, as the lackey brought ber another note. She read it, and answered verbally, "Say to-morrow at the grand duchess's; "then she continued, "For the believer there is no sin."
"Yes; but 'faith without works is dead,'" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, recalling this phrase of his catechism, with a smile establishing his independence.
"That is the famous passage in the Epistle of St. James," said Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, in a reproachful tone, looking at the countess, as if to recall frequent discussions on the subject, "How much harm the false interpretation of that passage has done! It has driven more persons from the faith than anything else! 'I have no works, therefore I cannot believe,' is the logical conclusion from it. It means exactly the opposite."
"It is our monks who claim to be saved by works, by their fastings, their abstinences," said the countess, with an air of fastidious scorn. "Our way is far better and easier," she added, looking at Oblonsky with that scorch
