inking into a reverie, "why does not your aspect gladden me to-day? As
of old, the sun plays on you; and your bosom breathes, as sublimely as
of old, eternal life; but that life is not of this world. You seem to me
to-day a mournful waste; not a boat, not a sail, not a sign of man's
existence. All is desolate!

"Yes, Ammalat," he added; "I am tired of your ever-angry, lonely sea--of
your country peopled with diseases, and with men who are worse than all
maladies in the world. I am weary of the war itself, of invisible
enemies, of the service shared with unfriendly comrades. It is not
enough that they impeded me in my proceedings--they spoiled what I
ordered to be done--they found fault with what I intended, and
misrepresented what I had effected. I have served my sovereign with
truth and fidelity, my country and this region with disinterestedness; I
have renounced, a voluntary exile, all the conveniences of life, all the
charms of society; have condemned my intellect to torpidity, being
deprived of books; have buried my heart in solitude; have abandoned my
beloved; and what is my reward? When will that moment arrive, when I
throw myself into the arms of my bride; when I, wearied with service,
shall repose myself under my native cottage-roof, on the green shore of
the Dnieper; when a peaceful villager, and a tender father, surrounded
by my relations and my good peasants, I shall fear only the hail of
heaven for my harvests; fight only with wild-beasts? My heart yearns for
that hour. My leave of absence is in my pocket, my dismission is
promised me.... Oh, that I could fly to my bride!... And in five days I
shall for certain be in Georgieffsk. Yet it seems as if the sands of
Libya, a sea of ice----as if the eternity of the grave itself, separated
us!"

Verkhoffsky was silent. Tears ran down his cheeks; his horse, feeling
the slackened rein, quickened his pace--and thus the pair alone,
advanced to some distance from the detachment.... It seemed as if
destiny itself surrendered the colonel into the hands of the assassin.

But pity penetrated the heart of Ammalat, maddened as he was, and
burning with wine--like a sunbeam falling in a robber's cave. He beheld
the sorrow, the tears of the man whom he had so long considered as his
friend, and hesitated. "No!" he thought, "to such a degree as that it is
impossible to dissimulate...."

At this moment Verkhoffsky started from his reverie, lifted up his head,
and spoke to Ammal