d a half already, and all
that time his imagination had been busy picturing his Moscow rooms,
his Moscow friends, his man Pyotr, and his writing-table. He gazed
half wonderingly at the dark, motionless trees, and it seemed strange
to him that he was living now, not in his summer villa at Sokolniki,
but in a provincial town in a house by which a great herd of cattle
was driven every morning and evening, accompanied by terrible clouds
of dust and the blowing of a horn. He thought of long conversations
in which he had taken part quite lately in Moscow--conversations
in which it had been maintained that one could live without love,
that passionate love was an obsession, that finally there is no
such love, but only a physical attraction between the sexes--and
so on, in the same style; he remembered them and thought mournfully
that if he were asked now what love was, he could not have found
an answer.

The service was over, the people began to appear. Laptev strained
his eyes gazing at the dark figures. The bishop had been driven by
in his carriage, the bells had stopped ringing, and the red and
green lights in the belfry were one after another extinguished--
there had been an illumination, as it was dedication day--but the
people were still coming out, lingering, talking, and standing under
the windows. But at last Laptev heard a familiar voice, his heart
began beating violently, and he was overcome with despair on seeing
that Yulia Sergeyevna was not alone, but walking with two ladies.

"It's awful, awful!" he whispered, feeling jealous. "It's awful!"

At the corner of the lane, she stopped to say good-bye to the ladies,
and while doing so glanced at Laptev.

"I was coming to see you," he said. "I'm coming for a chat with
your father. Is he at home?"

"Most likely," she answered. "It's early for him to have gone to
the club."

There were gardens all along the lane, and a row of lime-trees
growing by the fence cast a broad patch of shadow in the moonlight,
so that the gate and the fences were completely plunged in darkness
on one side, from which came the sounds of women whispering, smothered
laughter, and someone playing softly on a balalaika. There was a
fragrance of lime-flowers and of hay. This fragrance and the murmur
of the unseen whispers worked upon Laptev. He was all at once
overwhelmed with a passionate longing to throw his arms round his
companion, to shower kisses on her face, her hands, her shoulders,
t