cascades
of glittering water over the high parapet, trickling in little lines and
pools, then rising into sheeted levels, then billowing in waves against
the walls of the house, flooding the doors and the windows, until so far
as the eye could reach there were only high towers remaining above its
grasp. I do not know what happened to my security, and saw at length the
waters stretch from sky to sky, one dark, tossing ocean.

The sun rose, a dead yellow; slowly the waters sank again, islands
appeared, stretches of mud and waste. Heaving their huge bodies out of
the ocean, vast monsters crawled through the mud, scaled and horned,
lying like logs beneath the dead sun. The waters sank--forests rose. The
sun sank and there was black night, then a faint dawn, and in the early
light of a lovely morning a man appeared standing on the beach, shading
his eyes, gazing out to sea. I fancied that in that strong bearded
figure I recognised my peasant, who had seemed to haunt my steps so
often. Gravely he looked round him, then turned back into the forest....

Was my dream thus? Frankly I do not know--too neat an allegory to be
true, perhaps--and yet there was something of this in it. I know that I
saw Boris, and the Rat, and Vera, and Semyonov, and Markovitch,
appearing, vanishing, reappearing, and that I was strongly conscious
that the submerged and ruined world did not _touch_ them, and was only a
background to their own individual activities.... I know that Markovitch
seemed to come to me again and cry, "Be patient... be patient.... Have
faith... be faithful!"

I know that I woke struggling to keep him with me, crying out that he
was not to leave me, that that way was danger.... I woke to find my room
flooded with sunshine, and my old woman looking at me with disapproval.

"Wake up, Barin," she was saying, "it's three o'clock."

"Three o'clock?" I muttered, trying to pull myself together.

"Three in the afternoon... I have some tea for you."

When I realised the time I had the sensation of the wildest panic. I
jumped from my bed, pushing the old woman out of the room. I had
betrayed my trust! I had betrayed my trust! I felt assured 'that some
awful catastrophe had occurred, something that I might have prevented.
When I was dressed, disregarding my housekeeper's cries, I rushed out
into the street. At my end of the Ekaterinsgofsky Canal I was stopped by
great throngs of men and women returning homewards from the procession.