way with greater
speed.

As for Gubin, he continued, unchecked, though with a trifle less
animosity, rather as though he were reading aloud a manuscript which he
found wearisome:

"See how a man like Peter Birkin may pride himself upon his wealth, and
receive honour during his lifetime, yet all the while have the devil
grinning over his shoulder!"

Then he, Gubin, kept silent awhile, and merely breathed heavily, and
twisted his body about. But suddenly, he resumed in a strange whisper:

"Fifteen years ago--no, surely it was longer ago than that?--Madame
Nadkin, Nadezhda's mother-in-law, made it her practice to come to this
spot to meet her lover. And a fine gallant HE was!"

Somehow, as I watched the woman creeping along, and looking as though
she were intending to commit a theft, or as though she fancied that at
any moment she might see the plump brothers Birkin issue from the
courtyard into the garden and come shuffling ponderously over the
darkened ground, with ropes and cudgels grasped in coarse, red hands
which knew no pity; somehow, as I watched her, I felt saddened, and
paid little heed to Gubin's whispered remarks, so intently were my eyes
fixed upon the granary wall as, after gliding along it awhile, the
woman bent her head and disappeared through the dark blue of the
washhouse door. As for Gubin, he went to sleep with a last drowsy
remark of:

"Life is all falsity. Husbands, wives, fathers, children--all of them
practise deceit."

In the east, portions of the sky were turning to light purple, and
other portions to a darker hue, while from time to time I could see,
looming black against those portions, coils of smoke the density of
which kept being stabbed with fiery spikes of flame, so that the vague,
towering forest looked like a hill on the top of which a fiery dragon
was crawling about, and writhing, and intermittently raising tremulous,
scarlet wings, and as often relapsing into, becoming submerged in, the
bank of vapour. And, in contemplating the spectacle, I seemed actually
to be able to hear the cruel, hissing din of combat between red and
black, and to see pale, frightened rabbits scudding from underneath the
roots of trees amid showers of sparks, and panting, half-suffocated
birds fluttering wildly amid the branches as further and further
afield, and more and more triumphantly, the scarlet dragon unfurled its
wings, and consumed the darkness, and devoured the rain-soaked timber.

Presently