Alexander Alexandrovitch Agrenev, engineer, spent all day in the , laying and exploding . In the village below was a factory, its chimneys smoke; and creaking wagonettes sped and forwards from the parapet. Above on the cliff stood huge sappy pines. All day the sky was grey and cloudy, and the smoke from the chimneys spread like a low over the earth. The dynamite exploded with a great and expulsion of smoke.  
The autumn darkness, with its sharp, acid, sweet tang, was already falling as Agrenev proceeded homeward with the head-miner, Eduardovich Bitska, a Lithuanian, and the lights from the engine- house shone brightly in the distance.
 
The engineer's quarters lay in a forest-clearing on the further side of the valley; the cement structures of its small buildings stood out in uniformity; the blue light of its torches and , throwing back dark shadows from the trunks and branches of the pine-trees, which laced, interlaced, and dusky and intangible between the tall straight stems, finally melting amidst the .
 
His skin jacket was sticking to Agrenev's back, as, no doubt,
Bitska's was also.
"My missus will soon be home," Bitska said cheerfully—he had recently been married. He in broken Russian, with a foreign accent.
 
In Agrenev's house it was dark. The warm glow from the torches outside fell on the window-ledges and them, but inside the only light was that visible through the of his wife's tightly closed door: his beloved wife—so aloof—so strange. The rain had started, and its dri............