My playmates told me, when they drew me back into a corner of the gateway, to let a policeman pass.
Vanka, the little white-haired boy, told me all about it, when he ran out of his mother's laundry on purpose to throw mud after me when I happened to pass.

I heard about it during prayers, and when women quarrelled in the market place; and sometimes, waking in the night, I heard my parents whisper it in the dark.

There was no time in my life when I did not hear and see and feel the truth--the reason why Polotzk was cut off from the rest of Russia.

It was the first lesson a little girl in Polotzk had to learn.

But for a long while I did not understand.