“I didn t understand her, and knew I did not understand her; I ought to have been silent, but for some reason, most likely for fear my silence might be taken for stupidity, I thought fit to try to persuade her not to go to her mother’s, but to stay at home.  When people cry, they don’t like their tears to be seen.  And I lighted match after match and went on striking till the box was empty.  What I wanted with this ungenerous illumination, I can’t conceive to this day.  Cold-hearted people are apt to be awkward, and even stupid.

“In the end Kisotchka took my arm and we set off.  Going out of the gate, we turned to the right and sauntered slowly along the soft dusty road.  It was dark.  As my eyes grew gradually accustomed to the darkness, I began to distinguish the silhouettes of the old gaunt oaks and lime trees which bordered the road.  The jagged, precipitous cliffs, intersected here and there by deep, narrow ravines and creeks, soon showed indistinctly, a black streak on the right.  Low bushes nestled by the hollows, looking like sitting figures.  It was uncanny.  I looked sideways suspiciously at the cliffs, and the murmur of the sea and the stillness of the country alarmed my imagination.  Kisotchka did not speak.  She was still trembling, and before she had gone half a mile she was exhausted with walking and was out of breath.  I too was silent.

“Three-quarters of a mile from the Quarantine Station there was a deserted building of four storeys, with a very high chimney in which there had once been a steam flour mill.  It stood solitary on the cliff, and by day it could be seen for a long distance, both by sea and by land.  Because it was deserted and no one lived in it, and because there was an echo in it which distinctly repeated the steps and voices of passers-by, it seemed mysterious.  Picture me in the dark night arm-in-arm with a woman who was running away from her husband near this tall long monster which repeated the sound of every step I took and stared at me fixedly with its hundred black windows.  A normal young man would have been moved to romantic feelings in such surroundings, but I looked at the dark windows and thought:  ’All this is very impressive, but time will come when of that building and of Kisntchka and her troubles and of me with my thoughts, not one grain of dust will remain. . . .  All is nonsense and vanity. . . .’

“When we reached the flour mill Kisotchka suddenly stopped, took her arm out of mine, and said, no longer in a childish voice, but in her own: 

“’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!’