hild, and had not changed at all since then. Every corner of the
garden and of the yard recalled the far-away past. And in his
childhood, too, just as now, the whole yard bathed in moonlight
could be seen through the sparse trees, the shadows had been
mysterious and forbidding, a black dog had lain in the middle of
the yard, and the clerks' windows had stood wide open. And all these
were cheerless memories.

The other side of the fence, in the neighbour's yard, there was a
sound of light steps.

"My sweet, my precious . . ." said a man's voice so near the fence
that Laptev could hear the man's breathing.

Now they were kissing. Laptev was convinced that the millions and
the business which was so distasteful to him were ruining his life,
and would make him a complete slave. He imagined how, little by
little, he would grow accustomed to his position; would, little by
little, enter into the part of the head of a great firm; would begin
to grow dull and old, die in the end, as the average man usually
does die, in a decrepit, soured old age, making every one about him
miserable and depressed. But what hindered him from giving up those
millions and that business, and leaving that yard and garden which
had been hateful to him from his childhood?

The whispering and kisses the other side of the fence disturbed
him. He moved into the middle of the yard, and, unbuttoning his
shirt over his chest, looked at the moon, and it seemed to him that
he would order the gate to be unlocked, and would go out and never
come back again. His heart ached sweetly with the foretaste of
freedom; he laughed joyously, and pictured how exquisite, poetical,
and even holy, life might be. . . .

But he still stood and did not go away, and kept asking himself:
"What keeps me here?" And he felt angry with himself and with the
black dog, which still lay stretched on the stone yard, instead of
running off to the open country, to the woods, where it would have
been free and happy. It was clear that that dog and he were prevented
from leaving the yard by the same thing; the habit of bondage, of
servitude. . . .

At midday next morning he went to see his wife, and that he might
not be dull, asked Yartsev to go with him. Yulia Sergeyevna was
staying in a summer villa at Butovo, and he had not been to see her
for five days. When they reached the station the friends got into
a carriage, and all the way there Yartsev was singing and in raptures
over the e