When I came to myself I saw that I was no longer in the house, but in the street, and was standing with the doctor near a lamp-post.

“It’s sad, it’s sad,” he was saying, and tears were trickling down his cheeks.  “She is in good spirits, she’s always laughing and hopeful, but her position’s hopeless, dear boy.  Your Radish hates me, and is always trying to make me feel that I have treated her badly.  He is right from his standpoint, but I have my point of view too; and I shall never regret all that has happened.  One must love; we ought all to love—­oughtn’t we?  There would be no life without love; anyone who fears and avoids love is not free.”

Little by little he passed to other subjects, began talking of science, of his dissertation which had been liked in Petersburg.  He was carried away by his subject, and no longer thought of my sister, nor of his grief, nor of me.  Life was of absorbing interest to him.  She has America and her ring with the inscription on it, I thought, while this fellow has his doctor’s degree and a professor’s chair to look forward to, and only my sister and I are left with the old things.

When I said good-bye to him, I went up to the lamp-post and read the letter once more.  And I remembered, I remembered vividly how that spring morning she had come to me at the mill, lain down and covered herself with her jacket—­she wanted to be like a simple peasant woman.  And how, another time—­it was in the morning also —­we drew the net out of the water, and heavy drops of rain fell upon us from the riverside willows, and we laughed.

It was dark in our house in Great Dvoryansky Street.  I got over the fence and, as I used to do in the old days, went by the back way to the kitchen to borrow a lantern.  There was no one in the kitchen.  The samovar hissed near the stove, waiting for my father.  “Who pours out my father’s tea now?” I thought.  Taking the lantern I went out to the shed, built myself up a bed of old newspapers and lay down.  The hooks on the walls looked forbidding, as they used to of old, and their shadows flickered.  It was cold.  I felt that my sister would come in in a minute, and bring me supper, but at once I remembered that she was ill and was lying at Radish’s, and it seemed to me strange that I should have climbed over the fence and be lying here in this unheated shed.  My mind was in a maze, and I saw all sorts of absurd things.

There was a ring.  A ring familiar from childhood:  first the wire rustled against the wall, then a short plaintive ring in the kitchen.  It was my father come back from the club.  I got up and went into the kitchen.  Axinya the cook clasped her hands on seeing me, and for some reason burst into tears.

“My own!” she said softly.  “My precious!  O Lord!”

And she began crumpling up her apron in her agitation.  In the window there were standing jars of berries in vodka.  I poured myself out a teacupful and greedily drank it off, for I was intensely thirsty.  Axinya had quite recently scrubbed the table and benches, and there was that smell in the kitchen which is found in bright, snug kitchens kept by tidy cooks.  And that smell and the chirp of the cricket used to lure us as children into the kitchen, and put us in the mood for hearing fairy tales and playing at “Kings” . . .