g in the
attic, and even if Masha brought all her furniture from town we should
not succeed in removing the impression of frigid emptiness and coldness.
I chose three small rooms with windows looking on to the garden, and
from early morning till late at night I was at work in them, glazing the
windows, hanging paper, blocking up the chinks and holes in the floor.
It was an easy, pleasant job. Every now and then I would run to the
river to see if the ice was breaking and all the while I dreamed of the
starlings returning. And at night when I thought of Masha I would be
filled with an inexpressibly sweet feeling of an all-embracing joy to
listen to the rats and the wind rattling and knocking above the ceiling;
it was like an old hobgoblin coughing in the attic.

The snow was deep; there was a heavy fall at the end of March, but it
thawed rapidly, as if by magic, and the spring floods rushed down so
that by the beginning of April the starlings were already chattering and
yellow butterflies fluttered in the garden. The weather was wonderful.
Every day toward evening I walked toward the town to meet Masha, and how
delightful it was to walk along the soft, drying road with bare feet!
Half-way I would sit down and look at the town, not daring to go nearer.
The sight of it upset me, I was always wondering how my acquaintances
would behave toward me when they heard of my love. What would my father
say? I was particularly worried by the idea that my life was becoming
more complicated, and that I had entirely lost control of it, and that
she was carrying me off like a balloon, God knows whither. I had already
given up thinking how to make a living, and I thought--indeed, I cannot
remember what I thought.

Masha used to come in a carriage. I would take a seat beside her and
together, happy and free, we used to drive to Dubechnia. Or, having
waited till sunset, I would return home, weary and disconsolate,
wondering why Masha had not come, and then by the gate or in the garden
I would find my darling. She would come by the railway and walk over
from the station. What a triumph she had then! In her plain, woollen
dress, with a simple umbrella, but keeping a trim, fashionable figure
and expensive, Parisian boots--she was a gifted actress playing the
country girl. We used to go over the house, and plan out the rooms, and
the paths, and the vegetable-garden, and the beehives. We already had
chickens and ducks and geese which we loved be