Page:Leo Tolstoi - Life Is Worth Living and Other Stories - tr. Adolphus Norraikow (1892).djvu/78

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Life is Worth Living.
71

would surely die. Her husband suddenly reminded her of God, and her manner changed at once.

"When she invited me to partake of the supper she had prepared I saw her looking at me very earnestly. There was no sign of death in her face. Then she was alive, and I recognized God's likeness in her features. It was then that I learned the first of the three great truths—what people are made of—and I discovered that in every human heart there is—love.

"I was greatly rejoiced to learn that God had already revealed to me one of the truths of which he had spoken. It was then that I smiled for the first time. But I had not yet learned all, for I could not understand what people do not need, nor yet what sustains life.

"I began to live with you and had been here a year when a man came and ordered boots that were to last one year and at the expiration of that time to be in perfect order. Looking at him, I saw standing behind him my old friend