I am beginning to forget the old house, and only sometimes when I am painting or reading I suddenly, apropos of nothing, remember the green light in the window, the sound of my footsteps as I walked home through the fields in the night, with my heart full of love, rubbing my hands in the cold.  And still more rarely, at moments when I am sad and depressed by loneliness, I have dim memories, and little by little I begin to feel that she is thinking of me, too —­that she is waiting for me, and that we shall meet. . . .

Misuce, where are you?

THREE YEARS

I

IT was dark, and already lights had begun to gleam here and there in the houses, and a pale moon was rising behind the barracks at the end of the street.  Laptev was sitting on a bench by the gate waiting for the end of the evening service at the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul.  He was reckoning that Yulia Sergeyevna would pass by on her way from the service, and then he would speak to her, and perhaps spend the whole evening with her.

He had been sitting there for an hour and a half already, and all that time his imagination had been busy picturing his Moscow rooms, his Moscow friends, his man Pyotr, and his writing-table.  He gazed half wonderingly at the dark, motionless trees, and it seemed strange to him that he was living now, not in his summer villa at Sokolniki, but in a provincial town in a house by which a great herd of cattle was driven every morning and evening, accompanied by terrible clouds of dust and the blowing of a horn.  He thought of long conversations in which he had taken part quite lately in Moscow—­conversations in which it had been maintained that one could live without love, that passionate love was an obsession, that finally there is no such love, but only a physical attraction between the sexes—­and so on, in the same style; he remembered them and thought mournfully that if he were asked now what love was, he could not have found an answer.

The service was over, the people began to appear.  Laptev strained his eyes gazing at the dark figures.  The bishop had been driven by in his carriage, the bells had stopped ringing, and the red and green lights in the belfry were one after another extinguished—­ there had been an illumination, as it was dedication day—­but the people were still coming out, lingering, talking, and standing under the windows.  But at last Laptev heard a familiar voice, his heart began beating violently, and he was overcome with despair on seeing that Yulia Sergeyevna was not alone, but walking with two ladies.

“It’s awful, awful!” he whispered, feeling jealous.  “It’s awful!”

At the corner of the lane, she stopped to say good-bye to the ladies, and while doing so glanced at Laptev.

“I was coming to see you,” he said.  “I’m coming for a chat with your father.  Is he at home?”