Dmitritch." Mashurina clambered out of the carriage.

An hour later Nejdanov was rolling up the courtyard leading to
Sipiagin's house. He did not feel well after his sleepless night and the
numerous discussions and explanations.

A beautiful face smiled to him out of the window. It was Madame
Sipiagina welcoming him back home.

"What glorious eyes she has!" he thought.

XII

A GREAT many people came to dinner. When it was over, Nejdanov took
advantage of the general bustle and slipped away to his own room. He
wanted to be alone with his own thoughts, to arrange the impressions
he had carried away from his recent journey. Valentina Mihailovna had
looked at him intently several times during dinner, but there had been
no opportunity of speaking to him. Mariana, after the unexpected freak
which had so bewildered him, was evidently repenting of it, and seemed
to avoid him. Nejdanov took up a pen to write to his friend Silin,
but he did not know what to say to him. There were so many conflicting
thoughts and sensations crowding in upon him that he did not attempt to
disentangle them, and put them off for another day.

Kollomietzev had made one of the guests at dinner. Never before had this
worthy shown so much insolence and snobbish contemptuousness as on this
occasion, but Nejdanov simply ignored him.

He was surrounded by a sort of mist, which seemed to hang before him
like a filmy curtain, separating him from the rest of the world.
And through this film, strange to say, he perceived only three
faces--women's faces--and all three were gazing at him intently. They
were Madame Sipiagina, Mashurina, and Mariana. What did it mean? Why
particularly these three? What had they in common, and what did they
want of him?

He went to bed early, but could not fall asleep. He was haunted by sad
and gloomy reflections about the inevitable end--death. These thoughts
were familiar to him, many times had he turned them over this way
and that, first shuddering at the probability of annihilation, then
welcoming it, almost rejoicing in it. Suddenly a peculiarly familiar
agitation took possession of him... He mused awhile, sat down at the
table, and wrote down the following lines in his sacred copy-book,
without a single correction:

When I die, dear friend, remember This desire I tell to thee: Burn thou
to the last black ember All my heart has writ for me. Let the fairest
flowers surround me, Sunlight laugh about my bed, Let