ater, when the woods were
carpeted and thick with lilies of the valley, Petrushka and Tatiana
walked in the woods and picked the last white violets, and later again
they sought the alleys of the landlord's property, where the lilac
bushes were a mass of blossom and fragrance, and there they listened to
the nightingale, the bird of spring. Then came the summer, the fragrance
of the beanfields, and the ripening of corn and the wonderful long
twilights, and July, when the corn, ripe and tall and stiff, changed the
plains into a vast rippling ocean of gold.

After the harvest, at the very beginning of autumn, they were to be
married. There had been a slight difficulty about money. Tatiana's
father had insisted that Petrushka should produce a certain not very
large sum; but the difficulty had been overcome and the money had been
found. There were no more obstacles, everything was smooth and settled.
Petrushka no longer thought of travels in foreign lands; he had
forgotten the old dreams which "Monte Cristo" had once kindled in him.

It was in the middle of August that the carpenter received instructions
from the landowner to make some wooden steps and a small raft and to fix
them up on the banks of the river for the convenience of bathers. It did
not take the carpenter and Petrushka long to make these things, and one
afternoon Petrushka drove down to the river to fix them in their place.
The river was broad, the banks were wooded with willow trees, and the
undergrowth was thick, for the woods reached to the river bank, which
was flat, but which ended sheer above the water over a slope of mud and
roots, so that a bather needed steps or a raft or a springboard, so as
to dive or to enter and leave the water with comfort.

Petrushka put the steps in their place--which was where the wood
ended--and made fast the floating raft to them. Not far from the bank
the ground was marshy and the spot was suspected by some people of being
haunted by malaria. It was a still, sultry day. The river was like oil,
the sky clouded but not entirely overclouded, and among the high banks
of grey cloud there were patches of blue.

When Petrushka had finished the job, he sat on the wooden steps, and
rolling some tobacco into a primitive cigarette, contemplated the
grey, oily water and the willow trees. It was too late in the year, he
thought, to make a bathing place. He dipped his hand in the water: it
was cold, but not too cold. Yet in a fortnight