Down below, the sea broke on the jagged chaos of rock. A stiff dry breeze blowing from distant Turkey fanned his face. The harbour, protected from the sea by a concrete mole, thrust itself in an irregular arc into the shore-line. And overlooking it all were the tiny white cottages of the town's outskirts perched on the slopes of the mountain range which broke off abruptly at the sea.
It was quiet here in the old park outside of the town. Yellow maple leaves floated slowly down onto its grass-grown paths.
The old Persian cabby who had driven Pavel out here from town could not help asking as his strange fare alighted:
"Why come here of all places? No young ladies, no amusements. Nothing but the jackals. . . .
What will you do here? Better let me drive you back to town, mister tovarish!"
Pavel paid him and the old man drove away.
The park was indeed a wilderness. Pavel found a bench on a cliff overlooking the sea, and sat down, lifting his face to the now mild autumn sun.
He had come to this quiet spot to think things over and consider what to do with his life. The time had come to review the situation and take some decision.
His second visit to the Kyutsams had brought the family strife to a head. The old man on learning of his arrival had flown into a rage. It fell naturally to Korchagin to lead the resistance. The old man unexpectedly encountered a vigorous rebuff from his wife and daughters, and from the first day of Pavel's arrival the house split into two hostile camps. The door leading to the parents' half of the house was locked and one of the small side rooms was rented to Korchagin. Pavel paid the rent in advance and the old man was somewhat mollified by the arrangement; now that his daughters had cut themselves off from him he would no longer be expected to support them.
For diplomatic reasons Albina remained with her husband. As for the old man, he kept strictly to his side of the house and avoided meeting the man he so heartily detested. But outside in the yard he made as much noise as possible to show that he was still the master.
Before he went to work in the co-operative shop, old Kyutsam had earned his living by shoemaking and carpentry and had built himself a small workshop in the backyard.

To annoy his lodger, he shifted his work bench from the shed to a spot in the yard right under Pavel's window where he hammered furiously for hours on end, deriving a malicious satisfaction from the knowledge that he was interfering with Korchagin's reading.
"Just you wait," he hissed to himself, "I'll get you out of here. .. ."
Far away a steamer laid a small dark trail of smoke over the sea at the very horizon. A flock of gulls skimmed the waves with piercing cries.

Pavel, his chin resting in his hand, sat lost in thought. His whole life passed swiftly before his mind's eye, from his childhood to the present. How had these twenty-four years of his been lived?
Worthily or unworthily? He went over them again, year by year, subjecting them to sober, impartial judgement, and he found to his immense relief that he had not done so badly with his life. Mistakes there had been, the mistakes of youth, and chiefly of ignorance. But in the stormy days of struggle for Soviet power he had been in the thick of the fighting and on the crimson banner of Revolution there were a few drops of his own life's blood.
He had remained in the ranks until his strength had failed him. And now, struck down and unable to hold his place in the firing lines, there was nothing left for him but the field hospital. He remembered the time when they had stormed Warsaw and how, at the height of battle, one of the men had been hit. He fell to the ground under his horse's hooves. His comrades quickly bandaged his wounds, turned him over to the stretcher-bearers and sped onward in pursuit of the enemy. The squadron had not  halted its advance for the sake of one fallen soldier. Thus it was in the fight for a great cause and thus it had to be. True, there were exceptions. He had seen legless machine-gunners on gun carriages in battle. These men had struck terror into the enemy's ranks, their guns had sown death and destruction, and their steel-like courage and unerring eye had made them the pride of their units. But such men were few.
What was he to do now that defeat had overtaken him and there was no longer any hope of returning to the ranks? Had he not extracted from Bazhanova the admission that the future held even worse torment in store for him? What was to be done? The question was like a yawning abyss spreading at his feet.
What was there to live for now that he had lost what he prized most — the ability to fight? How was he to justify his existence today and in the cheerless tomorrow?

How was he to fill his days? Exist merely to breathe, to eat and to drink? Remain a helpless bystander watching his comrades fight their way forward? Be a burden to the detachment? No, better to destroy his treacherous body! A bullet in the heart — and be done with it! A timely end to a life well lived. Who would condemn the soldier for putting himself out of his agony?
He felt the flat body of his Browning in his pocket. His fingers closed over the grip, and slowly he drew out the weapon.
"Who would have thought that you would come to this?"
The muzzle stared back at him with cold contempt. Pavel laid the pistol on his knee and cursed bitterly.
"Cheap heroics, my lad! Any fool can shoot himself. That is the easiest way out, the coward's way.
You can always put a bullet through your head when life hits you too hard. But have you tried getting the better of life? Are you sure you have done everything you can to break out of the steel trap? Have you forgotten the fighting at Novograd-Volynsky when we went into the attack seventeen times in one day until finally, in spite of everything, we won through? Put away that gun and never breathe a word of this to anyone. Learn how to go on living when life becomes unbearable. Make your life useful."
He got up and went down to the road. A passing mountaineer gave him a lift on his cart. When they reached town he got off and bought a newspaper and read the announcement of a meeting of the city Party group in the Demyan Bedny Club. It was very late when he returned home that night. He had made a speech at the meeting, little suspecting that it was the last he was ever to make at a large public gathering.
Taya was still awake when he got home. She had been worried at Pavel's prolonged absence.
What had happened to him? She remembered the grim, cold look she had observed that morning in his eyes, always so live and warm. He never liked to talk about himself, but she felt that he was under some severe mental strain.
As the clock in her mother's room chimed two she heard the gate creak and, slipping on her jacket, she went to open the door. Lola, asleep in her own room, murmured restlessly as Taya passed her.
"I was beginning to get worried," Taya whispered with relief when Pavel came in.
"Nothing is going to happen to me as long as I live, Taya," he whispered. "Lola's asleep? I am not the least bit sleepy for some reason. I have something to tell you.

Let's go to your room so as not to wake Lola."
Taya hesitated. It was very late. How could she let him come to her room at this late hour? What would mother think? But she could not refuse for fear of offending him.

What could he have to say to her, she wondered, as she led the way to her room.
"This is how it is, Taya," Pavel began in a low voice. He sat down opposite her in the dimly-lighted room, so close that she could feel his breath. "Life takes such strange turns that you begin to wonder sometimes. I have had a bad time of it these past few days. I did not know how I could go on living. Life had never seemed so black. But today I held a meeting of my own private 'political bureau' and adopted a decision of tremendous importance. Don't be surprised at what I have to say."
He told her what he had gone through in the past few months and much of what had passed through his mind during his visit to the park.
"That is the situation. Now for the most important thing. The storm in this family is only beginning. We must get out of here into the fresh air and as far away from this hole as possible.
We must start life afresh. Once I have taken a hand in this fight I'm going to see it through. Our life, yours and mine, is none too happy at present. I have decided to breathe some warmth into it.
Do you know what I mean? Will you be my life's companion, my wife?"
Taya was deeply moved by his confession, but these last words startled her.
"I am not asking you for an answer tonight," he went on. "You must think it over carefully. I suppose you cannot understand how such things can be put so bluntly without the usual courting.
But you and I have no need of all that nonsense. I give you my hand, little girl, here it is. If you will put your trust in me you will not be mistaken. We can both give each other a great deal. Now, here is what I have decided: our compact will be in force until you grow up to be a real human being, a true Bolshevik. If I can't help you in that I am not worth a kopek. We must not break our compact until then. But when you grow up you will be freed of all obligations. Who knows what may happen? I may become a complete physical wreck, and in that case, remember, you must not consider yourself bound to me in any way."
He fell silent for a few moments, then he went on in tender, caressing voice: "And for the present, I offer you my friendship and my love."
He held her fingers in his, feeling at peace, as if she had already given her consent.
"Do you promise never to leave me?" "I can only give you my word, Taya. It is for you to believe that men like me do not betray their friends. . . . I only hope they will not betray me," he added bitterly. "I can't give you an answer tonight. It is all very sudden," she replied. Pavel got up.

"Go to bed, Taya. It will soon be morning." He went to his own room and lay down on the bed without undressing and was asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.
The desk by the window in Pavel's room was piled high with books from the Party library, newspapers and several notebooks filled with notes. A bed, two chairs and a huge map of China dotted with tiny black and red flags pinned up over the door between his room and Taya's, completed the furnishings. The people in the local Party Committee had agreed to supply Pavel with books and periodicals and had promised to instruct the manager of the biggest public library in town to send him whatever he needed. Before long large parcels of books began to arrive. Lola was amazed at the way he would sit over his books from early morning, reading and making notes all day long with only short breaks for breakfast and dinner. In the evenings, which he always spent with the two sisters, he would relate to them what he had read.
Long past midnight old Kyutsam would see a chink of light between the shutters of the room occupied by his unwelcome lodger. He would creep over to the window on tiptoe and peer in through the crack at the head bent over the books.
"Decent folks are in their beds at this hour but he keeps the light burning all night long. He behaves as if he were the master here. The girls have got altogether out of hand since he came," the old man would grumble to himself as he retired to his own quarters.
For the first time in eight years Pavel found himself with plenty of time on his hands, and no duties of any kind to attend to. He made good use of his time, reading with the avid eagerness of the newly-enlightened. He studied eighteen hours a day. How much longer his health could have withstood the strain is hard to say, but a seemingly casual remark from Taya one day changed everything.
"I have moved the chest of drawers away from the door leading to your room. If ever you want to talk to me you can come straight in. You don't need to go through Lola's room." The blood rushed to Pavel's cheeks. Taya smiled happily. Their compact was sealed.

The old man no longer saw the chink of light through the shuttered window of the corner room, and Taya's mother began to notice a glow in her daughter's eyes that betrayed a happiness she could not conceal. The faint shadows under her eyes spoke of sleepless nights. Often now Taya's singing and the strumming of a guitar echoed through the little house.
Yet Taya's happiness was not unmarred; her awakened womanhood rebelled against the clandestine relationship. She trembled at every sound, fancying that she heard her mother's footsteps. What if they asked her why she had taken to closing her door on the latch at night? The thought tormented her. Pavel noticed her fears and tried to comfort her.
"What are you afraid of?" he would say tenderly. "After all, you and I are grown-up people. Sleep in peace. No one shall intrude on our lives."
Comforted, she would press her cheek against his breast, and fall asleep, her arms around her loved one. And he would lie awake, listening to her steady breathing, keeping quite still lest he disturb her slumber, his whole being flooded with a deep tenderness for this girl who had entrusted her life to him.
Lola was the first to discover the reason for the shining light in Taya's eyes, and from that day the shadow of estrangement fell between the two sisters. Soon the mother too found out, or rather, guessed. And she was troubled. She had not expected it of Korchagin.
"Taya is not the wife for him," she remarked to Lola. "What will come of it, I wonder?"
Alarming thoughts beset her but she could not muster the courage to speak to Korchagin.
Young people began visiting Pavel, and sometimes his little room could barely hold them all. Thesound of their voices like the beehive's hum reached the old man's ears and often he could hear them singing in chorus:

Forbidding is this sea of ours,
Night and day its angry voice is heard. . .

and Pavel's favourite:

The whole wide world is drenched with tears....

It was the study circle of young workers which the Party Committee had assigned to Pavel in response to his insistent request for propaganda work.
Once more he had gripped the helm firmly with both hands, and the ship of life, having veered dangerously a few times, was now steering a new course. His dream of  returning to the ranks through study and learning was on the way to being realised.
But life continued to heap obstacles in his path, and bitterly he saw each obstacle as a further delay to the attainment of his goal.
One day the ill-starred student George turned up from Moscow, bringing a wife with him. He put up at the house of his father-in-law, a lawyer, and from there continued

to pester his mother with demands for money.
George's coming widened the rift in the Kyutsam family. George at once sided with his father, and together with his wife's family, which was inclined to be anti-Soviet, he sought by underhand means to drive Korchagin out of the house and induce Taya to break with him.
Two weeks after George's arrival Lola got a job in another town and she left, taking her mother and her little son with her. Soon afterward, Pavel and Taya moved to a distant seaside town.

Artem did not often receive letters from his brother and the sight of an envelope with the familiar handwriting waiting for him on his desk in the City Soviet always made his heart beat faster.
Today too as he opened the envelope he thought tenderly:
"Ah, Pavel! If only you lived nearer to me. I could do with your advice, lad."

"Artem," he read. "I am writing to tell you all that has happened to me lately. I do not write such things to anyone but you. But I know I can confide in you because you know me well and you will understand.
"Life continues to press down on me on the health front, dealing me blow upon blow. I hardly managed to struggle to my feet after one blow when another, more merciless than the last, lays me low. The most terrible thing is that I am powerless to resist. First I lost the power of my left arm.
And now, as if that were not enough, my legs have failed me. I could barely move about (within the limits of the room, of course) as it was, but now I have difficulty in crawling from bed to table.
And I daresay there is worse to come. What tomorrow will bring me no one knows.
"I never leave the house now, and only a tiny fragment of the sea is visible from my window. Can there be a greater tragedy than that of a man who combines in himself a treacherous body that refuses to obey him, and the heart of a Bolshevik, a Bolshevik who passionately yearns to work, to be with all of you in the ranks of the fighters advancing along the whole front in the midst of the stormy avalanche?
"I still believe that I shall return to the ranks, that in time my bayonet will take its place in the attacking columns. I must believe that, I have no right not to.

For ten years the Party and the Komsomol taught me to fight, and the leader's words, spoken to all of us, apply equally to me:
'There are no fortresses Bolsheviks cannot take.'
"My life now is spent entirely in study. Books, books and more books. I have accomplished a great deal, Artem. I have read and studied all the classics, and have passed my examinations in the first year of the correspondence course at the Communist University. In the evenings I lead a study circle of Communist youth. These young comrades are my link with the practical life of the Party organisation. Then there is Taya's education, and of course love, and the tender caresses of my little wife. Taya and I are the best of friends. Our household is very simply run — with my pension of thirty-two rubles and Taya's earnings we get along quite well. Taya is following............