ht, walked down the Nevski. There at the corner of the
Morskaia, because he was a nervous man who wished to be well with
every one in the world and because he had nothing especial to say, he
asked me to dinner, and I, because it was a fine night and there had
been good wine, said that I would go.

"The next day I cursed my folly. I do not know to this day why I did
not break the engagement, it would have been sufficiently easy, but
break it I did not and a week later, reluctantly, I went. Do you know
how houses and streets of which you have observed nothing, afterwards,
called out by some important event, leap into detail? That night I
swear that I saw nothing of that little street behind the Mariinsky
Theatre. It was a fine 'white night' at the end of May and the theatre
was in a bustle of arrivals because it was nearly eight o'clock. Not
at all the hour of Russian dinner, as you know, but Andrey
Vassilievitch always liked to be as English as possible. I tell you
that I saw nothing of the street and yet now I know that at the door
of the little _trakteer_ there were two men and a woman laughing, that
an _isvotchik_ was drawn up in front of a high white block of flats,
asleep, his head fallen on his breast, that the wonderful light,
faintly blue and misty like gauze hung down from the sky, down over
the houses, but falling not quite on to the pavement which was hard
and ugly and grey. The little street was very silent and quiet and
had, like so many Petrograd streets, a decorous intimacy with the
eighteenth century ghosts thronging its air....

"Afterwards, how I was to know that street, every stone and corner of
it! It seems wonderful to me now that I trod its pavement that night
so carelessly. My destination was a square little house at the corner
on the right. Andrey Vassilievitch boasted a whole house to himself, a
rare pride in our city, as you know. When I was inside the doors I
knew at once that it was not Andrey Vassilievitch's house at all. Some
stronger spirit than his was there. Knowing him, I had expected to
find there many modern things, some imitation of English manners, some
bad but expensive pictures, a gramophone, a pianolo, a library of
Russian classics in our hideous modern bindings, a billiard-room--you
know the character. How quiet this little house was. In the little
square hall an old faded carpet, a grandfather's clock and two
eighteenth century prints of Petrograd. All the rooms were square, so