He scrubbed himself until I should have
thought that he had no skin left.

"You're a fine big man, Rat," I said.

He was delighted with that, and came quite near my bed, stretching his
naked body, his arms and legs and chest, like a pleased animal.

"Yes, I'm a fine man, Barin," he said; "many women have loved me, and
many will again..." Then he went back, and producing clean drawers and
vest from somewhere (I suspect that they were mine but I was too weak to
care), put them on.

On the second and third days I felt much better. The thaw was less
violent, the wood crackled in my stove. On the morning of Wednesday
April 14 I got up, dressed, and sat in front of my window. The ice was
still there, but over it lay a faint, a very faint, filmy sheen of
water. It was a day of gleams, the sun flashing in and out of the
clouds. Just beneath my window a tree was pushing into bud. Pools of
water lay thick on the dirty melting snow. I got the Rat to bring a
little table and put some books on it. I had near me _The Spirit of
Man_, Keats's _Letters_, _The Roads_, Beddoes, and _Pride and
Prejudice_. A consciousness of the outer world crept, like warmth,
through my bones.

"Rat," I said, "who's been to see me?"

"No one," said he.

I felt suddenly a ridiculous affront.

"No one?" I asked, incredulous.

"No one," he answered. "They've all forgotten you, Barin," he added
maliciously, knowing that that would hurt me.

It was strange how deeply I cared. Here was I who, only a short while
before, had declared myself done with the world for ever, and now I was
almost crying because no one had been to see me! Indeed, I believe in my
weakness and distress I actually did cry. No one at all? Not Vera nor
Nina nor Jeremy nor Bohun? Not young Bohun even...? And then slowly my
brain realised that there was now a new world. None of the old
conditions held any longer.

We had been the victims of an earthquake. Now it was--every man for
himself! Quickly then there came upon me an eager desire to know what
had happened in the Markovitch family. What of Jerry and Vera? What of
Nicholas? What of Semyonov...?

"Rat," I said, "this afternoon I am going out!"

"Very well, Barin," he said, "I, too, have an engagement."

In the afternoon I crept out like an old sick man. I felt strangely shy
and nervous. When I reached the corner of Ekateringofsky Canal and the
English Prospect I decided not to go in and see the Markovitches. For
one thin