of his youth had slipped away from him, and that the moments which
he had passed through so fruitlessly would never be repeated.

When he reached the bridge he stopped and sank into thought. He
wanted to discover the reason of his strange coldness. That it was
due to something within him and not outside himself was clear to
him. He frankly acknowledged to himself that it was not the
intellectual coldness of which clever people so often boast, not
the coldness of a conceited fool, but simply impotence of soul,
incapacity for being moved by beauty, premature old age brought on
by education, his casual existence, struggling for a livelihood,
his homeless life in lodgings. From the bridge he walked slowly,
as it were reluctantly, into the wood. Here, where in the dense
black darkness glaring patches of moonlight gleamed here and there,
where he felt nothing except his thoughts, he longed passionately
to regain what he had lost.

And Ivan Alexeyitch remembers that he went back again. Urging himself
on with his memories, forcing himself to picture Vera, he strode
rapidly towards the garden. There was no mist by then along the
road or in the garden, and the bright moon looked down from the sky
as though it had just been washed; only the eastern sky was dark
and misty. . . . Ognev remembers his cautious steps, the dark
windows, the heavy scent of heliotrope and mignonette. His old
friend Karo, wagging his tail amicably, came up to him and sniffed
his hand. This was the one living creature who saw him walk two or
three times round the house, stand near Vera's dark window, and
with a deep sigh and a wave of his hand walk out of the garden.

An hour later he was in the town, and, worn out and exhausted,