The na?ve enchanting tale of our love lasted for nearly a month. To this day there live with undiminished potency in my soul Olyessia’s beautiful face and those blazing twilights, those dewy mornings fragrant with lilies and honey, full of vigorous freshness and the sonorous noise of birds, those hot, languid, idle days of June. In that time neither weariness, nor fatigue, nor my eternal passion for a wandering life ever touched my soul. I was a pagan god or a strong, young animal, delighting in the light and warmth and conscious joy of life, and in calm, pure, sensuous love.

After my recovery old Manuilikha became so intolerably snappish, met me with such undisguised malice, and, while I was sitting in the hut, moved the pots on the stove with such noisy exasperation, that Olyessia and I preferred to meet in the forest every evening.... And the stately green beauty of the pine-forest was the precious setting which adorned our tranquil love.

Every day with deeper and deeper wonder I discovered that Olyessia, the child of the forest who could not even read, showed in many things of life a delicate sensitiveness and a peculiar native refinement. There are always horrible213 sides to love, in its direct and coarser meaning, which are a torment and a shame to nervous artistic natures. But Olyessia could avoid them with such na?ve chastity that our love was never once spoiled by a single ugly thought, or one moment of cynicism.

Meanwhile the time of my departure was approaching. To tell the truth, all my official business at Perebrod was already at an end; but I had deliberately delayed my return to town. I had not yet breathed a word of this to Olyessia, for I was afraid even to imagine to myself how she would receive the news that I must go away. Habit had taken roots too deep in me. To see Olyessia every day, to hear her dear voice and musical laughter, to feel the tender beauty of her caresses, had come to be more than a necessity for me. On the rare days when stress of weather prevented us from meeting I felt exactly as though I had been lost, and deprived of what was chief and all-important in my life. Every occupation was tedious and useless to me, and my whole being craved for the forest, the warmth and the light, and Olyessia’s dear familiar face.

The idea of marrying Olyessia entered my head more and more insistently. At first it had only presented itself to me but rarely as a possible, and in extremities an honest, issue to our relationship. Only one thing alarmed and checked me. I dared not even imagine to myself what Olyessia would be like, fashionably dressed, chatting to the wives of my colleagues in the214 drawing-room, snatched away from the fascinating setting of the old forest, full of legends and mysterious powers.

But the nearer came the time for me to depart, the greater was the anguish and horror of loneliness which possessed me. My resolution to marry grew daily stronger in my soul, and finally I could no longer see it as a bold defiance of society. ‘Decent, well-educated men marry dressmakers and servant-maids,’ I consoled myself, ‘and they live happily together, and to the day of their death they thank the fate which urged them to this resolution. Shall I be unhappier than the others?’

Once in mid-June, towards evening, I was waiting for Olyessia, according to my habit, at the turn of a narrow forest path among the flowering whitethorn bushes. When she was far in the distance I made out the easy, quick sound of her steps.

‘How are you, my darling?’ Olyessia said, embracing me and breathing heavily. ‘Have I kept you waiting too long?... It was so hard to get away at the last.... Fighting with granny all the while.’

‘Isn’t she reconciled yet?’

‘Never! She says to me: “He’ll ruin you.... He’ll play with you at his pleasure and then desert you.... He doesn’t love you at all——”’

‘So that’s what she says about me?’

‘Yes, darling, about you.... But I don’t believe a single word of it all the same....’

215 ‘Does she know everything?’

‘I couldn’t say for sure.... But I believe she knows.... I’ve never spoken to her about it—she guesses. But what’s the good of thinking about that.... Come.’

She plucked a twig of whitethorn with a superb spray of blossom and thrust it into her hair. We walked slowly along the path which showed faintly rosy beneath the evening sun.

The night before I had decided that I would speak out at all costs this evening. But a strange timidity lay like a weight upon my tongue. ‘If I tell Olyessia that I am going away and going to marry her,’ I thought, ‘will she not think that my proposal is only made to soothe the pain of the first wound?... But I’ll begin the moment we reach that maple with the peeled trunk,’ I fixed in my mind. We were already on a level with the maple. Pale with agitation I had begun to draw a deep breath to begin to speak, when my courage suddenly failed, and ended in a nervous painful beating of my heart and a chill on my lips. ‘Twenty-seven is my number,’ I thought a few moments later. ‘I’ll count up to twenty-seven, and then!...’ I began to count to myself, but when I reached twenty-seven I felt that the resolution had not yet matured in me. ‘No,’ I said to myself, ‘I’d better go on counting to sixty ... that will make just a minute, and then without fail, without fail——’

‘What’s the matter with you to-day?’ Olyessia suddenly asked. ‘You’re thinking of216 something unpleasant. What has happened to you?’

Then I began to speak, but with a tone repugnant to myself, with an assumed unnatural carelessness, just as though it were a trifling affair.

‘Yes, it really is rather unpleasant.... You have guessed it, Olyessia.... You see, my service here is finished, and the authorities have summoned me back to town.’

I took a quick side-glance at Olyessia. The colour died away from her face and her lips quivered. She said not a word in reply. Some minutes I walked in silence by her side. The grasshoppers chattered noisily in the grass, and the strained monotonous note of a corncrake sounded somewhere afar.

‘Of course you understand, yourself, Olyessia,’ I again began, ‘that it’s no good my staying here, besides there’s nowhere to stay.... And I can’t neglect my duty——’

‘No ... why ... what’s the good of talking?’ Olyessia said, in a voice outwardly calm, but so deep and lifeless that terror seized me. ‘If it’s your duty, of course ... you must go——’

She stopped by the tree and leaned against the trunk, her face utterly pale, her hands hanging limply by her body, a poignant pitiful smile on her lips. Her pallor frightened me. I rushed to her and pressed her hands vehemently.

‘What’s the matter, Olyessia ... darling!’

‘Nothing ... forgive me.... It will pass—now....217 My head is dizzy.’ She controlled herself with an effort and went on, leaving her hand in mine.

‘You’re thinking ill of me, Olyessia,’ I said reproachfully. ‘You should be ashamed. Do you think, as well, that I could cast you off and leave you? No, my darling. That’s why I began this conversation—so that you should go this very day to your grandmother and tell her you will be my wife.’

Quite contrary to my expectation, Olyessia showed hardly a trace of surprise at my words.

‘Your wife?’ She shook her head slowly and sadly. ‘No, it’s impossible, Vanichka dear.’

‘Why............