about four
o'clock, after one more look at the hissing waters, drew my curtains,
lit my candles, and sat down near my stove to finish that favourite of
mine, already mentioned in these pages, De la Mare's _The Return_.

I read on with absorbed attention. I did not hear the dripping on the
roof, nor the patter-patter of the drops from the ceiling, nor the
beating of the storm against the glass. My candles blew in the draught,
and shadows crossed and recrossed the page. Do you remember the book's
closing words?--

"Once, like Lawford in the darkness at Widderstone, he glanced up
sharply across the lamplight at his phantasmagorical shadowy companion,
heard the steady surge of multitudinous rain-drops, like the roar of
Time's winged chariot hurrying near, then he too, with spectacles awry,
bobbed on in his chair, a weary old sentinel on the outskirts of his
friend's denuded battlefield."

"Shadowy companion," "multitudinous rain-drops," "a weary old sentinel,"
"his friend's denuded battlefield"... the words echoed like little
muffled bells in my brain, and it was, I suppose, to their chiming that
I fell into dreamless sleep.

From this I was suddenly roused by the sharp noise of knocking, and
starting up, my book clattering to the floor, I saw facing me, in the
doorway, Semyonov. Twice before he had come to me just like this--out of
the heart of a dreamless sleep. Once in the orchard near Buchatch, on a
hot summer afternoon; once in this same room on a moonlit night. Some
strange consciousness, rising, it seemed, deep out of my sleep, told me
that this would be the last time that I would so receive him.

"May I come in?" he said.

"If you must, you must," I answered. "I am not physically strong enough
to prevent you."

He laughed. He was dripping wet. He took off his hat and overcoat, sat
down near the stove, bending forward, holding his cloak in his hands and
watching the steam rise from it.

I moved away and stood watching. I was not going to give him any
possible illusion as to my welcoming him. He turned round and looked at
me.

"Truly, Ivan Andreievitch," he said, "you are a fine host. This is a
miserable greeting."

"There can be no greetings between us ever again," I answered him. "You
are a blackguard. I hope that this is our last meeting."

"But it is," he answered, looking at me with friendliness; "that is
precisely why I've come. I've come to say good-bye."

"Good-bye?" I repeated with astonishme