k
cliff was a red church; he could picture it all down to the smallest
detail, even the plaster on the gate and the calves that were always
grazing in the church enclosure. Three-quarters of a mile to the
right of the church there was a copse like a dark blur--it was
Count Koltonovitch's. And beyond the church Vlassitch's estate
began.

From behind the church and the count's copse a huge black storm-cloud
was rising, and there were ashes of white lightning.

"Here it is!" thought Pyotr Mihalitch. "Lord help us, Lord help
us!"

The horse was soon tired after its quick gallop, and Pyotr Mihalitch
was tired too. The storm-cloud looked at him angrily and seemed to
advise him to go home. He felt a little scared.

"I will prove to them they are wrong," he tried to reassure himself.
"They will say that it is free-love, individual freedom; but freedom
means self-control and not subjection to passion. It's not liberty
but license!"

He reached the count's big pond; it looked dark blue and frowning
under the cloud, and a smell of damp and slime rose from it. Near
the dam, two willows, one old and one young, drooped tenderly towards
one another. Pyotr Mihalitch and Vlassitch had been walking near
this very spot only a fortnight before, humming a students' song:

"'Youth is wasted, life is nought, when the heart is cold and
loveless.'"

A wretched song!

It was thundering as Pyotr Mihalitch rode through the copse, and
the trees were bending and rustling in the wind. He had to make
haste. It was only three-quarters of a mile through a meadow from
the copse to Vlassitch's house. Here there were old birch-trees on
each side of the road. They had the same melancholy and unhappy air
as their owner Vlassitch, and looked as tall and lanky as he. Big
drops of rain pattered on the birches and on the grass; the wind
had suddenly dropped, and there was a smell of wet earth and poplars.
Before him he saw Vlassitch's fence with a row of yellow acacias,
which were tall and lanky too; where the fence was broken he could
see the neglected orchard.

Pyotr Mihalitch was not thinking now of the horsewhip or of a slap
in the face, and did not know what he would do at Vlassitch's. He
felt nervous. He felt frightened on his own account and on his
sister's, and was terrified at the thought of seeing her. How would
she behave with her brother? What would they both talk about? And
had he not better go back before it was too late? As he made t