THE Don railway.  A quiet, cheerless station, white and solitary in the steppe, with its walls baking in the sun, without a speck of shade, and, it seems, without a human being.  The train goes on after leaving one here; the sound of it is scarcely audible and dies away at last.  Outside the station it is a desert, and there are no horses but one’s own.  One gets into the carriage—­which is so pleasant after the train—­and is borne along the road through the steppe, and by degrees there are unfolded before one views such as one does not see near Moscow—­immense, endless, fascinating in their monotony.  The steppe, the steppe, and nothing more; in the distance an ancient barrow or a windmill; ox-waggons laden with coal trail by. . . .  Solitary birds fly low over the plain, and a drowsy feeling comes with the monotonous beat of their wings.  It is hot.  Another hour or so passes, and still the steppe, the steppe, and still in the distance the barrow.  The driver tells you something, some long unnecessary tale, pointing into the distance with his whip.  And tranquillity takes possession of the soul; one is loth to think of the past. . . .

A carriage with three horses had been sent to fetch Vera Ivanovna Kardin.  The driver put in her luggage and set the harness to rights.

“Everything just as it always has been,” said Vera, looking about her.  “I was a little girl when I was here last, ten years ago.  I remember old Boris came to fetch me then.  Is he still living, I wonder?”

The driver made no reply, but, like a Little Russian, looked at her angrily and clambered on to the box.

It was a twenty-mile drive from the station, and Vera, too, abandoned herself to the charm of the steppe, forgot the past, and thought only of the wide expanse, of the freedom.  Healthy, clever, beautiful, and young—­she was only three-and-twenty—­she had hitherto lacked nothing in her life but just this space and freedom.

The steppe, the steppe. . . .  The horses trotted, the sun rose higher and higher; and it seemed to Vera that never in her childhood had the steppe been so rich, so luxuriant in June; the wild flowers were green, yellow, lilac, white, and a fragrance rose from them and from the warmed earth; and there were strange blue birds along the roadside. . . .  Vera had long got out of the habit of praying, but now, struggling with drowsiness, she murmured: 

“Lord, grant that I may be happy here.”

And there was peace and sweetness in her soul, and she felt as though she would have been glad to drive like that all her life, looking at the steppe.

Suddenly there was a deep ravine overgrown with oak saplings and alder-trees; there was a moist feeling in the air—­there must have been a spring at the bottom.  On the near side, on the very edge of the ravine, a covey of partridges rose noisily.  Vera remembered that in old days they used to go for evening walks to this ravine; so it must be near home!  And now she could actually see the poplars, the barn, black smoke rising on one side—­they were burning old straw.  And there was Auntie Dasha coming to meet her and waving her handkerchief; grandfather was on the terrace.  Oh dear, how happy she was!