y disobeying. God will give
you happiness. Forgive me. If only you knew how bitterly my mother
and I are crying!"

Then there was the dark fir avenue, the broken-down fence. . . .
On the field where then the rye was in flower and the corncrakes
were calling, now there were cows and hobbled horses. On the slope
there were bright green patches of winter corn. A sober workaday
feeling came over me and I felt ashamed of all I had said at the
Voltchaninovs', and felt bored with life as I had been before. When
I got home, I packed and set off that evening for Petersburg.

----

I never saw the Voltchaninovs again. Not long ago, on my way to the
Crimea, I met Byelokurov in the train. As before, he was wearing a
jerkin and an embroidered shirt, and when I asked how he was, he
replied that, God be praised, he was well. We began talking. He had
sold his old estate and bought another smaller one, in the name of
Liubov Ivanovna. He could tell me little about the Voltchaninovs.
Lida, he said, was still living in Shelkovka and teaching in the
school; she had by degrees succeeded in gathering round her a circle
of people sympathetic to her who made a strong party, and at the
last election had turned out Balagin, who had till then had the
whole district under his thumb. About Genya he only told me that
she did not live at home, and that he did not know where she was.

I am beginning to forget the old house, and only sometimes when I
am painting or reading I suddenly, apropos of nothing, remember the
green light in the window, the sound of my footsteps as I walked
home through the fields in the night, with my heart full of love,
rubbing my hands in the cold. And still more rarely, at moments
when I am sad and depressed by loneliness, I have dim memories, and
little by little I begin to feel that she is thinking of me, too
--that she is waiting for me, and that we shall meet. . . .

Misuce, where are you?

THREE YEARS

I

IT was dark, and already lights had begun to gleam here and there
in the houses, and a pale moon was rising behind the barracks at
the end of the street. Laptev was sitting on a bench by the gate
waiting for the end of the evening service at the Church of St.
Peter and St. Paul. He was reckoning that Yulia Sergeyevna would
pass by on her way from the service, and then he would speak to
her, and perhaps spend the whole evening with her.

He had been sitting there for an hour an