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To have flung all shame aside, to have forgotten her love for another man, it was this that to her appeared incomprehensible. Jaded and sick at heart, she rose, and noiselessly began to dress, fearful lest Dubova should awake. Then she sat at the window, gazing anxiously at the green and yellow foliage in the garden.
When Yourii ceased talking, Dubova, meditating on her own dull, monotonous existence and vanishing youth without joy or love, asked him in a low voice, "Tell me, Yourii, has the thought of suicide never crossed your mind?" "Why do you ask me that?" "Oh! well, I don't know ..." They said no more. "You are on the committee, aren't you?" asked Sina eagerly.
"With pleasure," said Yourii. Sina lodged with Dubova in a small house that stood in a large, barren- looking garden. All the way thither she and Yourii talked of the lecture and its impression upon them, so that Yourii felt more and more convinced that he had done a good and great thing. As they reached the house, Sina said: "Won't you come in for a moment?" Yourii gladly accepted.
"We shan't get along like this; that's very clear," said Dubova. "Walk back with me, Yourii Nicolaijevitch," cried Sina. Then, turning to Sanine, she said "Au revoir!" For a moment their eyes met. Sina felt pleasurably alarmed. "Alas!" cried Dubova, as she went out, "our little club has collapsed before it has even been properly started."
As before, the courtyard was dark and solitary, but the outer gate was open, and a sound of hasty footsteps in the house could be heard, and of the opening and shutting of drawers. "Olga has come back," said Sina. "Oh! Sina, is that you?" asked Dubova from within, and the tone of her voice suggested some sinister occurrence. Pale and agitated, she appeared in the doorway. "Where were you?
"Probably, the police," remarked Goschienko with feigned indifference. "I am sure that you would not mind if it were the police," cried Dubova. Sanine looked at her intelligent eyes, and the plait of fair hair falling over her shoulder, which almost made her face attractive. "A smart girl, that!" he thought.
The two rock faces run on unbroken, only in one part the mountain is split, and through the rift laughs the blooming landscape of an alpine valley, with a white tower in the background. It is the tower of Dubova: there is Hungary.
"Yes, he seems to know," replied Dubova, with a nervous movement of the hands. "He looked at us all, and asked 'What is it? And then he shook from head to foot and said, 'Already! ... Oh! isn't it awful?" "It's too shocking!" All were silent. It was now quite dark, yet, though the sky was clear, to them it seemed suddenly to have grown gloomy and sad.
Many flowers, beautiful, scentless, autumn flowers, were brought and placed on the bier; in the midst of their red and white magnificence the face of Yourii lay calm and peaceful, showing no trace of conflict or of suffering. When the coffin was borne past Sina's house, she and her friend Dubova joined the funeral-procession.
Yourii hummed this softly to himself. Then he said, aloud: "How tedious, sad, and dreadful it all is!" as if complaining to some one. The sound of his own voice alarmed him, and he turned round to see if he had been overheard. "I am drunk," he thought. Silent and serene, the night looked down. While Sina Karsavina and Dubova were absent on a visit, Yourii's life seemed uneventful and monotonous.
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