trot along the dark, narrow
path close beside the copse; his whole figure was clearly visible even
to the patch on his shoulder, in spite of his being in the shade; the
horse's hoofs flew along bravely. The sun's rays from the farther side
fell full on the copse, and piercing through its thickets, threw such a
warm light on the aspen trunks that they looked like pines, and their
leaves were almost a dark blue, while above them rose a pale blue sky,
faintly tinged by the glow of sunset. The swallows flew high; the wind
had quite died away, belated bees hummed slowly and drowsily among the
lilac blossom; a swarm of midges hung like a cloud over a solitary
branch which stood out against the sky. 'How beautiful, my God!'
thought Nikolai Petrovitch, and his favourite verses were almost on his
lips; he remembered Arkady's _Stoff und Kraft_--and was silent, but
still he sat there, still he gave himself up to the sorrowful
consolation of solitary thought. He was fond of dreaming; his country
life had developed the tendency in him. How short a time ago, he had
been dreaming like this, waiting for his son at the posting station,
and what a change already since that day; their relations that were
then undefined, were defined now--and how defined! Again his dead wife
came back to his imagination, but not as he had known her for many
years, not as the good domestic housewife, but as a young girl with a
slim figure, innocently inquiring eyes, and a tight twist of hair on
her childish neck. He remembered how he had seen her for the first
time. He was still a student then. He had met her on the staircase of
his lodgings, and, jostling by accident against her, he tried to
apologise, and could only mutter, '_Pardon, monsieur_,' while she
bowed, smiled, and suddenly seemed frightened, and ran away, though at
the bend of the staircase she had glanced rapidly at him, assumed a
serious air, and blushed. Afterwards, the first timid visits, the
half-words, the half-smiles, and embarrassment; and melancholy, and
yearnings, and at last that breathing rapture.... Where had it all
vanished? She had been his wife, he had been happy as few on earth are
happy.... 'But,' he mused, 'these sweet first moments, why could one
not live an eternal, undying life in them?'

He did not try to make his thought clear to himself; but he felt that
he longed to keep that blissful time by something stronger than memory;
he longed to feel his Marya near him again to