his
shoulder-blades, it could be seen that he was weighed down by
depression and yearning. He stood still for a moment, looked at
Konstantin and sat down.

The camp fire had died down by now; there was no flicker, and the
patch of red had grown small and dim. . . . And as the fire went
out the moonlight grew clearer and clearer. Now they could see the
full width of the road, the bales of wool, the shafts of the waggons,
the munching horses; on the further side of the road there was the
dim outline of the second cross. . . .

Dymov leaned his cheek on his hand and softly hummed some plaintive
song. Konstantin smiled drowsily and chimed in with a thin voice.
They sang for half a minute, then sank into silence. Emelyan started,
jerked his elbows and wriggled his fingers.

"Lads," he said in an imploring voice, "let's sing something sacred!"
Tears came into his eyes. "Lads," he repeated, pressing his hands
on his heart, "let's sing something sacred!"

"I don't know anything," said Konstantin.

Everyone refused, then Emelyan sang alone. He waved both arms,
nodded his head, opened his mouth, but nothing came from his throat
but a discordant gasp. He sang with his arms, with his head, with
his eyes, even with the swelling on his face; he sang passionately
with anguish, and the more he strained his chest to extract at least
one note from it, the more discordant were his gasps.

Yegorushka, like the rest, was overcome with depression. He went
to his waggon, clambered up on the bales and lay down. He looked
at the sky, and thought of happy Konstantin and his wife. Why did
people get married? What were women in the world for? Yegorushka
put the vague questions to himself, and thought that a man would
certainly be happy if he had an affectionate, merry and beautiful
woman continually living at his side. For some reason he remembered
the Countess Dranitsky, and thought it would probably be very
pleasant to live with a woman like that; he would perhaps have
married her with pleasure if that idea had not been so shameful.
He recalled her eyebrows, the pupils of her eyes, her carriage, the
clock with the horseman. . . . The soft warm night moved softly
down upon him and whispered something in his ear, and it seemed to
him that it was that lovely woman bending over him, looking at him
with a smile and meaning to kiss him. . . .

Nothing was left of the fire but two little red eyes, which kept
on growing smaller and smaller. Ko