Up to the time of my departure we strolled together about the Monastery, whiling away the long hot day.  He never left my side a minute; whether he had taken a fancy to me or was afraid of solitude, God only knows!  I remember we sat together under a clump of yellow acacia in one of the little gardens that are scattered on the mountain side.

“I am leaving here in a fortnight,” he said; “it is high time.”

“Are you going on foot?”

“From here to Slavyansk I shall walk, then by railway to Nikitovka; from Nikitovka the Donets line branches off, and along that branch line I shall walk as far as Hatsepetovka, and there a railway guard, I know, will help me on my way.”

I thought of the bare, deserted steppe between Nikitovka and Hatsepetovka, and pictured to myself Alexandr Ivanitch striding along it, with his doubts, his homesickness, and his fear of solitude . . . .  He read boredom in my face, and sighed.

“And my sister must be married by now,” he said, thinking aloud, and at once, to shake off melancholy thoughts, pointed to the top of the rock and said: 

“From that mountain one can see Izyum.”

As we were walking up the mountain he had a little misfortune.  I suppose he stumbled, for he slit his cotton trousers and tore the sole of his shoe.

“Tss!” he said, frowning as he took off a shoe and exposed a bare foot without a stocking.  “How unpleasant! . . .  That’s a complication, you know, which . . .  Yes!”

Turning the shoe over and over before his eyes, as though unable to believe that the sole was ruined for ever, he spent a long time frowning, sighing, and clicking with his tongue.

I had in my trunk a pair of boots, old but fashionable, with pointed toes and laces.  I had brought them with me in case of need, and only wore them in wet weather.  When we got back to our room I made up a phrase as diplomatic as I could and offered him these boots.  He accepted them and said with dignity: 

“I should thank you, but I know that you consider thanks a convention.”

He was pleased as a child with the pointed toes and the laces, and even changed his plans.

“Now I shall go to Novotcherkassk in a week, and not in a fortnight,” he said, thinking aloud.  “In shoes like these I shall not be ashamed to show myself to my godfather.  I was not going away from here just because I hadn’t any decent clothes. . . .”

When the coachman was carrying out my trunk, a lay brother with a good ironical face came in to sweep out the room.  Alexandr Ivanitch seemed flustered and embarrassed and asked him timidly: 

“Am I to stay here or go somewhere else?”

He could not make up his mind to occupy a whole room to himself, and evidently by now was feeling ashamed of living at the expense of the Monastery.  He was very reluctant to part from me; to put off being lonely as long as possible, he asked leave to see me on my way.