“Can’t you understand, you blockhead, that it has nothing to do with us?  Go on to Tchalisov!”

“What is it?  Who’s there?” Ananyev asked huskily again.  “Damnation take them all,” he said, getting up and going to the door.  “What is it?”

I dressed, and two minutes later went out of the hut.  Ananyev and the student, both in their underclothes and barefooted, were angrily and impatiently explaining to a peasant who was standing before them bare-headed, with his whip in his hand, apparently not understanding them.  Both faces looked preoccupied with workaday cares.

“What use are your cauldrons to me,” shouted Ananyev.  “Am I to put them on my head, or what?  If you can’t find Tchalisov, find his assistant, and leave us in peace!”

Seeing me, the student probably recalled the conversation of the previous night.  The workaday expression vanished from his sleepy face and a look of mental inertia came into it.  He waved the peasant off and walked away absorbed in thought.

It was a cloudy morning.  On the line where the lights had been gleaming the night before, the workmen, just roused from sleep, were swarming.  There was a sound of voices and the squeaking of wheelbarrows.  The working day was beginning.  One poor little nag harnessed with cord was already plodding towards the embankment, tugging with its neck, and dragging along a cartful of sand.

I began saying good-bye. . . .  A great deal had been said in the night, but I carried away with me no answer to any question, and in the morning, of the whole conversation there remained in my memory, as in a filter, only the lights and the image of Kisotchka.  As I got on the horse, I looked at the student and Ananyev for the last time, at the hysterical dog with the lustreless, tipsy-looking eyes, at the workmen flitting to and fro in the morning fog, at the embankment, at the little nag straining with its neck, and thought: 

“There is no making out anything in this world.”

And when I lashed my horse and galloped along the line, and when a little later I saw nothing before me but the endless gloomy plain and the cold overcast sky, I recalled the questions which were discussed in the night.  I pondered while the sun-scorched plain, the immense sky, the oak forest, dark on the horizon and the hazy distance, seemed saying to me: 

“Yes, there’s no understanding anything in this world!”

The sun began to rise. . . .

A STORY WITHOUT AN END

Soon after two o’clock one night, long ago, the cook, pale and agitated, rushed unexpectedly into my study and informed me that Madame Mimotih, the old woman who owned the house next door, was sitting in her kitchen.

“She begs you to go in to her, sir . . .” said the cook, panting.  “Something bad has happened about her lodger. . . .  He has shot himself or hanged himself. . . .”