“Why don’t you eat?” asked my wife.

I smiled: 

“Bread—­it is so strange.”

She glanced at the bread, at the stale, dry crust of bread, and for some reason her face became sad.  Still continuing to look at it, she silently adjusted her apron with her hands and her head turned slightly, very slightly, in the direction where the children were sleeping.

“Do you feel sorry for them?” I asked.

She shook her head without removing her eyes from the bread.

“No, but I was thinking of what happened in our life before.”

How incomprehensible!  As one who awakens from a long sleep, she surveyed the room with her eyes and all seemed to her so incomprehensible.  Was this the place where we had lived?

“You were my wife.”

“And there are our children.”

“Here, beyond the wall, your father died.”

“Yes.  He died.  He died without awakening.”

The smallest child, frightened at something in her sleep, began to cry.  And this simple childish cry, apparently demanding something, sounded so strange amid these phantom walls, while there, below, people were building barricades.

She cried and demanded—­caresses, certain queer words and promises to soothe her.  And she soon was soothed.

“Well, go!” said my wife in a whisper.

“I should like to kiss them.”

“I am afraid you will wake them up.”

“No, I will not.”

It turned out that the oldest child was awake—­he had heard and understood everything.  He was but nine years old, but he understood everything—­he met me with a deep, stern look.

“Will you take your gun?” he asked thoughtfully and earnestly.

“I will.”

“It is behind the stove.”

“How do you know?  Well, kiss me.  Will you remember me?”

He jumped up in his bed, in his short little shirt, hot from sleep, and firmly clasped my neck.  His arms were burning—­they were so soft and delicate.  I lifted his hair on the back of his head and kissed his little neck.

“Will they kill you?” he whispered right into my ear.

“No, I will come back.”

But why did he not cry?  He had cried sometimes when I had simply left the house for a while:  Is it possible that it had reached him, too?  Who knows?  So many strange things happened during the great days.

I looked at the walls, at the bread, at the candle, at the flame which had kept flickering, and took my wife by the hand.

“Well—­’till we meet again!”

“Yes—­’till we meet again!”

That was all.  I went out.  It was dark on the stairway and there was the odour of old filth.  Surrounded on all sides by the stones and the darkness, groping down the stairs, I was seized with a tremendous, powerful and all-absorbing feeling of the new, unknown and joyous something to which I was going.