ce beneath one's feet, and the patient aquiescence of roofs
and bridges and cobbles one knew that the real winter had come. Already,
although it was only four o'clock in the afternoon, there was darkness,
with the strange almost metallic glow as of the light from an inverted
looking-glass that snow makes upon the air. I had not far to go, but the
long stretch of the Ekateringofsky Canal was black and gloomy and
desolate, repeating here and there the pale yellow reflection of some
lamp, but for the most part dim and dead, with the hulks of barges lying
like sleeping monsters on its surface. As I turned into Anglisky
Prospect I found stretched like a black dado, far down the street,
against the wall, a queue of waiting women. They would be there until
the early morning, many of them, and it was possible that then the
bread would not be sufficient. And this not from any real lack, but
simply from the mistakes of a bungling, peculating Government. No wonder
that one's heart was heavy.

I found Vera Michailovna to my relief alone. When Sacha brought me into
the room she was doing what I think I had never seen her do before,
sitting unoccupied, her eyes staring in front of her, her hands folded
on her lap.

"I don't believe that I've ever caught you idle before, Vera
Michailovna," I said.

"Oh, I'm glad you've come!" She caught my hand with an eagerness very
different from her usual calm, quiet greeting. "Sit down. It's an
extraordinary thing. At that very moment I was wishing for you."

"What is it I can do for you?" I asked. "You know that I would do
anything for you."

"Yes, I know that you would. But--well. You can't help me because I
don't know what's the matter with me."

"That's very unlike you," I said.

"Yes, I know it is--and perhaps that's why I am frightened. It's so
vague; and you know I long ago determined that if I couldn't define a
trouble and have it there in front of me, so that I could strangle
it--why I wouldn't bother about it. But those things are so easy to
say."

She got up and began to walk up and down the room. That again was
utterly unlike her, and altogether I seemed to be seeing, this
afternoon, some quite new Vera Michailovna, some one more intimate, more
personal, more appealing. I realised suddenly that she had never before,
at any period of our friendship, asked for my help--not even for my
sympathy. She was so strong and reliant and independent, cared so little
for the opinion of o