eyes that she understood why I was confused.

"Why don't you come to see me?" she repeated. "If you don't want
to come, you see, I have come to you."

She got up and came close to me.

"Don't desert me," she said, and her eyes filled with tears. "I am
alone, utterly alone."

She began crying; and, hiding her face in her muff, articulated:

"Alone! My life is hard, very hard, and in all the world I have no
one but you. Don't desert me!"

Looking for a handkerchief to wipe her tears she smiled; we were
silent for some time, then I put my arms round her and kissed her,
scratching my cheek till it bled with her hatpin as I did it.

And we began talking to each other as though we had been on the
closest terms for ages and ages.

X

Two days later she sent me to Dubetchnya and I was unutterably
delighted to go. As I walked towards the station and afterwards,
as I was sitting in the train, I kept laughing from no apparent
cause, and people looked at me as though I were drunk. Snow was
falling, and there were still frosts in the mornings, but the roads
were already dark-coloured and rooks hovered over them, cawing.