“And what if we meet in ten years’ time?” he said. “What shall we be like then? You will be by then the respectable mother of a family, and I shall be the author of some weighty statistical work of no use to anyone, as thick as forty thousand such works. We shall meet and think of old days.… Now we are conscious of the present; it absorbs and excites us, but when we meet we shall not remember the day, nor the month, nor even the year in which we saw each other for the last time on this bridge. You will be changed, perhaps.… Tell me, will you be different?”

Vera started and turned her face towards him.

“What?” she asked.

“I asked you just now.…”

“Excuse me, I did not hear what you were saying.”

Only then Ognev noticed a change in Vera. She was pale, breathing fast, and the tremor in her breathing affected her hands and lips and head, and not one curl as usual, but two, came loose and fell on her forehead.… Evidently she avoided looking him in the face, and, trying to mask her emotion, at one moment fingered her collar, which seemed to be rasping her neck, at another pulled her red shawl from one shoulder to the other.

“I am afraid you are cold,” said Ognev. “It’s not at all wise to sit in the mist. Let me see you back nach- haus.”

Vera sat mute.

“What is the matter?” asked Ognev, with a smile. “You sit silent and don’t answer my questions. Are you cross, or don’t you feel well? Eh?”

Vera pressed the palm of her hand to the cheek nearest to Ognev, and then abruptly jerked it away.

“An awful position!” she murmured, with a look of pain on her face. “Awful!”

“How is it awful?” asked Ognev, shrugging his shoulders and not concealing his surprise. “What’s the matter?”

Still breathing hard and twitching her shoulders, Vera turned her back to him, looked at the sky for half a minute, and said:

“There is something I must say to you, Ivan Alexeyitch.…”

“I am listening.”

“It may seem strange to you.… You will be surprised, but I don’t care.…”

Ognev shrugged his shoulders once more and prepared himself to listen.

“You see…” Verotchka began, bowing her head and fingering a ball on the fringe of her shawl. “You see… this is what I wanted to tell you.… You’ll think it strange… and silly, but I… can’t bear it any longer.”

Vera’s words died away in an indistinct mutter and were suddenly cut short by tears. The girl hid her face in her handkerchief, bent lower than ever, and wept bitterly. Ivan Alexeyitch cleared his throat in confusion and looked about him hopelessly, at his wits’ end, not knowing what to say or do. Being unused to the sight of tears, he felt his own eyes, too, beginning to smart.