all as like one another as two drops of water! They are all good-natured and warm-hearted because they are all well-fed and know nothing of struggle or suffering.…I want to be in those big damp houses where people suffer, embittered by work and need.…”

And this, too, seemed to Ognev affected and not to be taken seriously. When Vera had finished he still did not know what to say, but it was impossible to be silent, and he muttered:

“Vera Gavrilovna, I am very grateful to you, though I feel I’ve done nothing to deserve such…feeling…on your part. Besides, as an honest man I ought to tell you that…happiness depends on equality— that is, when both parties are…equally in love.…”

But he was immediately ashamed of his mutterings and ceased. He felt that his face at that moment looked stupid, guilty, blank, that it was strained and affected.…Vera must have been able to read the truth on his countenance, for she suddenly became grave, turned pale, and bent her head.

“You must forgive me,” Ognev muttered, not able to endure the silence. “I respect you so much that…it pains me.…”

Vera turned sharply and walked rapidly homewards. Ognev followed her.

“No, don’t!” said Vera, with a wave of her hand. “Don’t come; I can go alone.”

“Oh, yes…I must see you home anyway.”

Whatever Ognev said, it all to the last word struck him as loathsome and flat. The feeling of guilt grew greater at every step. He raged inwardly, clenched his fists, and cursed his coldness and his stupidity with women. Trying to stir his feelings, he looked at Verotchka’s beautiful figure, at her hair and the traces of her little feet on the dusty road; he remembered her words and her tears, but all that only touched his heart and did not quicken his pulse.

“Ach! one can’t force oneself to love,” he assured himself, and at the same time he thought, “But shall I ever fall in love without? I am nearly thirty! I have never met anyone better than Vera and I never shall.… Oh, this premature old age! Old age at thirty!”

Vera walked on in front more and more rapidly, without looking back at him or raising her head. It seemed to him that sorrow had made her thinner and narrower in the shoulders.

“I can imagine what’s going on in her heart now!” he thought, looking at her back. “She must be ready to die with shame and mortification! My God, there’s so much life, poetry, and meaning in it that it would move a stone, and I…I am stupid and absurd!”

At the gate Vera stole a glance at him, and, shrugging and wrapping her shawl round her walked rapidly away down the avenue.

Ivan Alexeyitch was left alone. Going back to the copse, he walked slowly, continually standing still and looking round at the gate with an expression in his whole figure that suggested that he could not believe his own memory. He looked for Vera’s footprints on the road, and could not believe that the girl who had so attracted him had just declared her love, and that he had so clumsily and bluntly “refused” her. For- the first time in his life it was his lot to learn by experience how little that a man does depends on his own will, and to suffer in his own person the feelings of a decent kindly man who has against his will caused his neighbour cruel, undeserved anguish.

His conscience tormented him, and when Vera disappeared he felt as though he had lost something very precious, something very near and dear which he could never find again. He felt that with Vera a part of his youth had slipped away from him, and that the moments which he had passed through so fruitlessly would never be repeated.