I am nearly thirty! I have never met anyone better than Vera and I
never shall. . . . Oh, this premature old age! Old age at thirty!"

Vera walked on in front more and more rapidly, without looking back
at him or raising her head. It seemed to him that sorrow had made
her thinner and narrower in the shoulders.

"I can imagine what's going on in her heart now!" he thought, looking
at her back. "She must be ready to die with shame and mortification!
My God, there's so much life, poetry, and meaning in it that it
would move a stone, and I . . . I am stupid and absurd!"

At the gate Vera stole a glance at him, and, shrugging and wrapping
her shawl round her walked rapidly away down the avenue.

Ivan Alexeyitch was left alone. Going back to the copse, he walked
slowly, continually standing still and looking round at the gate
with an expression in his whole figure that suggested that he could
not believe his own memory. He looked for Vera's footprints on the
road, and could not believe that the girl who had so attracted him
had just declared her love, and that he had so clumsily and bluntly
"refused" her. For the first time in his life it was his lot to
learn by experience how little that a man does depends on his own
will, and to suffer in his own person the feelings of a decent
kindly man who has against his will caused his neighbour cruel,
undeserved anguish.

His conscience tormented him, and when Vera disappeared he felt as
though he had lost something very precious, something very near and
dear which he could never find again. He felt that with Vera a part