ell, here is the bridge!" said Ognev. "Here you must turn back."

Vera stopped and drew a breath.

"Let us sit down," she said, sitting down on one of the posts.
"People generally sit down when they say good-bye before starting
on a journey."

Ognev settled himself beside her on his bundle of books and went
on talking. She was breathless from the walk, and was looking, not
at Ivan Alexeyitch, but away into the distance so that he could not
see her face.

"And what if we meet in ten years' time?" he said. "What shall we
be like then? You will be by then the respectable mother of a family,
and I shall be the author of some weighty statistical work of no
use to anyone, as thick as forty thousand such works. We shall meet
and think of old days. . . . Now we are conscious of the present;
it absorbs and excites us, but when we meet we shall not remember
the day, nor the month, nor even the year in which we saw each other
for the last time on this bridge. You will be changed, perhaps
. . . . Tell me, will you be different?"

Vera started and turned her face towards him.

"What?" she asked.

"I asked you just now. . . ."

"Excuse me, I did not hear what you were saying."

Only then Ognev noticed a change in Vera. She was pale, breathing
fast, and the tremor in her breathing affected her hands and lips
and head, and not one curl as usual, but two, came loose and fell
on her forehead. . . . Evidently she avoided looking him in the
face, and, trying to mask her emotion, at one moment fingered her
collar, which seemed to be rasping her neck, at another pulled her
red shawl from one shoulder to the other.

"I am afraid you are cold," said Ognev. "It's not at all wise to
sit in the mist. Let me see you back _nach-haus_."

Vera sat mute.

"What is the matter?" asked Ognev, with a smile. "You sit silent
and don't answer my questions. Are you cross, or don't you feel
well?"

Vera pressed the palm of her hand to the cheek nearest to Ognev,
and then abruptly jerked it away.

"An awful position!" she murmured, with a look of pain on her face.
"Awful!"

"How is it awful?" asked Ognev, shrugging his shoulders and not
concealing his surprise. "What's the matter?"

Still breathing hard and twitching her shoulders, Vera turned her
back to him, looked at the sky for half a minute, and said:

"There is something I must say to you, Ivan Alexeyitch. . . ."

"I am listening."

"It may seem strange to you. . . . You will be