One summer morning Vera Semyonovna, dressed for travelling with a satchel over her shoulder, went in to her brother and coldly kissed him on the forehead.

“Where are you going?” he asked with surprise.

“To the province of N. to do vaccination work.”  Her brother went out into the street with her.

“So that’s what you’ve decided upon, you queer girl,” he muttered.  “Don’t you want some money?”

“No, thank you.  Good-bye.”

The sister shook her brother’s hand and set off.

“Why don’t you have a cab?” cried Vladimir Semyonitch.

She did not answer.  Her brother gazed after her, watched her rusty-looking waterproof, the swaying of her figure as she slouched along, forced himself to sigh, but did not succeed in rousing a feeling of regret.  His sister had become a stranger to him.  And he was a stranger to her.  Anyway, she did not once look round.

Going back to his room, Vladimir Semyonitch at once sat down to the table and began to work at his article.

I never saw Vera Semyonovna again.  Where she is now I do not know.  And Vladimir Semyonitch went on writing his articles, laying wreaths on coffins, singing Gaudeamus, busying himself over the Mutual Aid Society of Moscow Journalists.

He fell ill with inflammation of the lungs; he was ill in bed for three months—­at first at home, and afterwards in the Golitsyn Hospital.  An abscess developed in his knee.  People said he ought to be sent to the Crimea, and began getting up a collection for him.  But he did not go to the Crimea—­he died.  We buried him in the Vagankovsky Cemetery, on the left side, where artists and literary men are buried.

One day we writers were sitting in the Tatars’ restaurant.  I mentioned that I had lately been in the Vagankovsky Cemetery and had seen Vladimir Semyonitch’s grave there.  It was utterly neglected and almost indistinguishable from the rest of the ground, the cross had fallen; it was necessary to collect a few roubles to put it in order.

But they listened to what I said unconcernedly, made no answer, and I could not collect a farthing.  No one remembered Vladimir Semyonitch.  He was utterly forgotten.

MIRE

I

GRACEFULLY swaying in the saddle, a young man wearing the snow-white tunic of an officer rode into the great yard of the vodka distillery belonging to the heirs of M. E. Rothstein.  The sun smiled carelessly on the lieutenant’s little stars, on the white trunks of the birch-trees, on the heaps of broken glass scattered here and there in the yard.  The radiant, vigorous beauty of a summer day lay over everything, and nothing hindered the snappy young green leaves from dancing gaily and winking at the clear blue sky.  Even the dirty and soot-begrimed appearance of the bricksheds and the stifling fumes of the distillery did not spoil the general good impression.  The lieutenant sprang gaily out of the saddle, handed over his horse to a man who ran up, and stroking with his finger his delicate black moustaches, went in at the front door.  On the top step of the old but light and softly carpeted staircase he was met by a maidservant with a haughty, not very youthful face.  The lieutenant gave her his card without speaking.