“‘Nikolay Anastasvitch, I know all this seems strange to you. But I am terribly unhappy! And you cannot even imagine how unhappy! It’s impossible to imagine it! I don’t tell you about it because one can’t talk about it.…Such a life, such a life!…’

“Kisotchka did not finish. She clenched her teeth and moaned as though she were doing her utmost not to scream with pain.

“‘Such a life!’ she repeated with horror, with the cadence and the southern, rather Ukrainian accent which particularly in women gives to emotional speech the effect of singing. ‘It is a life! Ah, my God, my God! what does it mean? Oh, my God, my God!’

“As though trying to solve the riddle of her fate, she shrugged her shoulders in perplexity, shook her head, and clasped her hands. She spoke as though she were singing, moved gracefully, and reminded me of a celebrated Little Russian actress.

“‘Great God, it is as though I were in a pit,’ she went on. ‘If one could live for one minute in happiness as other people live! Oh, my God, my God! I have come to such disgrace that before a stranger I am running away from my husband by night, like some disreputable creature! Can I expect anything good after that?’

“As I admired her movements and her voice, I began to feel annoyed that she was not on good terms with her husband. ‘It would be nice to have got on into relations with her!’ flitted through my mind; and this pitiless thought stayed in my brain, haunted me all the way and grew more and more alluring.…

“About a mile from the flour mill we had to turn to the left by the cemetery. At the turning by the corner of the cemetery there stood a stone windmill, and by it a little hut in which the miller lived. We passed the mill and the hut, turned to the left and reached the gates of the cemetery. There Kisotchka stopped and said:

“‘I am going back, Nikolay Anastasyitch! You go home, and God bless you, but I am going back. I am not frightened.’

“‘Well, what next!’ I said, disconcerted. ‘If you are going, you had better go!’

“‘I have been too hasty.…It was all about nothing that mattered. You and your talk took me back to the past and put all sort of ideas into my head.…I was sad and wanted to cry, and my husband said rude things to me before that officer, and I could not bear it.…And what’s the good of my going to the town to my mother’s? Will that make me any happier? I must go back.…But never mind…let us go on,’ said Kisotchka, and she laughed. ‘It makes no difference!’

“I remembered that over the gate of the cemetery there was an inscription: ‘The hour will come wherein all they that lie in the grave will hear the voice of the Son of God.’ I knew very well that sooner of later I and Kisotchka and her husband and the officer in the white tunic would lie under the dark trees in the churchyard; I knew that an unhappy and insulted fellow-creature was walking beside me. All this I recognised distinctly, but at the same time I was troubled by an oppressive and unpleasant dread that Kisotchka would turn back, and that I should not manage to say to her what had to be said. Never at any other time in my life have thoughts of a higher order been so closely interwoven with the basest animal prose as on that night.…It was horrible!

“Not far from the cemetery we found a cab. When we reached the High Street, where Kisotchka’s mother lived, we dismissed the cab and walked along the pavement. Kisotchka was silent all the while, while I looked at her, and I raged at myself, ‘Why don’t you begin? Now’s the time!’ About twenty paces from the hotel where I was staying, Kisotchka stopped by the lamp-post and burst into tears.