e heard a dog barking in the city, and I
laughed for happiness.

"Listen, a dog is barking."

My wife embraced me, and said:

"It is there, on the corner."

We bent over the window-sill, and there, in the transparent, dark depth,
we saw some movement--not people, but movement. Something was moving
about like a shadow. Suddenly the blows of a hatchet or a hammer
resounded. They sounded so cheerful, so resonant, as in a forest, as
on a river when you are mending a boat or building a dam. And in the
presentiment of cheerful, harmonious work, I firmly embraced my wife,
while she looked above the houses, above the roofs, looked at the young
crescent of the moon, which was already setting. The moon was so young,
so strange, even as a young girl who is dreaming and is afraid to tell
her dreams; and it was shining only for itself.

"When will we have a full moon?..."

"You must not! You must not!" my wife interrupted. "You must not speak
of that which will be. What for? IT is afraid of words. Come here."

It was dark in the room, and we were silent for a long time, without
seeing each other, yet thinking of the same thing. And when I started
to speak, it seemed to me that some one else was speaking; I was not
afraid, yet the voice of the other one was hoarse, as though suffocating
for thirst.

"What shall it be?"

"And--they?"

"You will be with them. It will be enough for them to have a mother. I
cannot remain."

"And I? Can I?"

I know that she did not stir from her place, but I felt distinctly that
she was going away, that she was far--far away. I began to feel so cold,
I stretched out my hands--but she pushed them aside.

"People have such a holiday once in a hundred years, and you want to
deprive me of it. Why?" she said.

"But they may kill you there. And our children will perish."

"Life will be merciful to me. But even if they should perish--"

And this was said by her, my wife--a woman with whom I had lived for ten
years. But yesterday she had known nothing except our children, and had
been filled with fear for them; but yesterday she had caught with terror
the stern symptoms of the future. What had come over her? Yesterday--but
I, too, forgot everything that was yesterday.

"Do you want to go with me?"

"Do not be angry"--she thought that I was afraid, angry--"Don't be
angry. To-night, when they began to knock here, and you were still
sleeping, I suddenly understood that my husband, my children