“Excuse me,” Merzlyakov interrupted calmly, “I understand about the bosom, but how could you see the lips if it was dark?”

Lobytko began trying to put himself right and laughing at Merzlyakov’s unimaginativeness.  It made Ryabovitch wince.  He walked away from the box, got into bed, and vowed never to confide again.

Camp life began. . . .  The days flowed by, one very much like another.  All those days Ryabovitch felt, thought, and behaved as though he were in love.  Every morning when his orderly handed him water to wash with, and he sluiced his head with cold water, he thought there was something warm and delightful in his life.

In the evenings when his comrades began talking of love and women, he would listen, and draw up closer; and he wore the expression of a soldier when he hears the description of a battle in which he has taken part.  And on the evenings when the officers, out on the spree with the setter—­Lobytko—­at their head, made Don Juan excursions to the “suburb,” and Ryabovitch took part in such excursions, he always was sad, felt profoundly guilty, and inwardly begged her forgiveness. . . .  In hours of leisure or on sleepless nights, when he felt moved to recall his childhood, his father and mother—­ everything near and dear, in fact, he invariably thought of Myestetchki, the strange horse, Von Rabbek, his wife who was like the Empress Eugenie, the dark room, the crack of light at the door. . . .

On the thirty-first of August he went back from the camp, not with the whole brigade, but with only two batteries of it.  He was dreaming and excited all the way, as though he were going back to his native place.  He had an intense longing to see again the strange horse, the church, the insincere family of the Von Rabbeks, the dark room.  The “inner voice,” which so often deceives lovers, whispered to him for some reason that he would be sure to see her . . . and he was tortured by the questions, How he should meet her?  What he would talk to her about?  Whether she had forgotten the kiss?  If the worst came to the worst, he thought, even if he did not meet her, it would be a pleasure to him merely to go through the dark room and recall the past. . . .

Towards evening there appeared on the horizon the familiar church and white granaries.  Ryabovitch’s heart beat. . . .  He did not hear the officer who was riding beside him and saying something to him, he forgot everything, and looked eagerly at the river shining in the distance, at the roof of the house, at the dovecote round which the pigeons were circling in the light of the setting sun.

When they reached the church and were listening to the billeting orders, he expected every second that a man on horseback would come round the church enclosure and invite the officers to tea, but . . . the billeting orders were read, the officers were in haste to go on to the village, and the man on horseback did not appear.