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"No, that is impossible," replied Yourii, "everything is too wisely and carefully arranged, and " "In my opinion," said Sanine, "there's nothing good anywhere." "How can you say that? What about Nature?" "Nature! Ha, ha!" Sanine laughed feebly, and waved his hand in derision. "It is customary, I know, to say that Nature is perfect. The truth is, that Nature is just as defective as mankind.
He walked once more along the boulevard. Girlish voices called to him through the dusk. Sina Karsavina and the school-mistress Dubova were sitting on a bench. It was now getting dark, and their figures were hardly discernible. They wore dark dresses, were without hats, and carried books in their hands. Yourii hastened to join them. "Where have you been?" he asked. "At the library," replied Sina.
A few feet away from the fire, and in quite a different place from where Yourii imagined him to be seated, Sanine struck a match. In the reddish flare of it Yourii saw his calm, friendly eyes, and beside him a young face whose soft eyes beneath their dark brows looked up at Sanine with simple joy.
The sickly hue of death confronted him at every point dying leaves and dying insects whose lives depend on warmth and light. Yourii could not comprehend this calm. The pageant of dying summer filled his soul with wrath unutterable. "Autumn already; and then winter, and the snow. Then spring, and summer, and autumn again! The eternal monotony of it all! And what shall I be doing all the while?
The sky was flecked with little pink clouds, while here and there a last star trembled in the blue. All was so beautiful, so calm, as if the awestruck earth awaited the splendid approach of dawn. Yourii at last went back to bed, but the garish daylight prevented him from getting sleep, as he lay there with aching brow and jaded eyes.
"Perhaps you know something about him?" she said suddenly. There was a suggestion of pain in her voice, which puzzled Yourii. "Oh! no," he said, "not at all. What should I know about Anatole Pavlovitch?" "But you would not have spoken like that, otherwise," persisted Lialia.
"So little is done here for the people," he said, as if he were telling Yourii a great secret, "and if anything is done, it is in a half- hearted, careless way. It is most extraordinary. To amuse a parcel of bored gentlefolk dozens of first-rate actors, singers and lecturers are engaged, but for the people a lecturer like myself is quite good enough." Schafroff smiled at his own bland irony.
It has not perished, but, like seed in the soil ..." "I was not talking about that," said Yourii, confused somewhat, and thus the more vexed, "what I meant to say ..." "No, excuse me, but that's what you said...." "If I said no, then I meant no!
Yourii was pleased to find that this genial old peasant knew his sister and spoke of her in such a simple, friendly way. "Now, then, let us go!" said Riasantzeff, in his cheery voice, as he walked first, after getting his gun and game-bag. "May you have luck!" cried Kousma, and then they could hear him coaxing the horse as he led it away to his hut.
Yourii felt it necessary to say this, being all the while glad that he had now got an engagement for the evening, and that he would see Sina again. "Why, yes, of course," said Schafroff. "Then, let us go." They walked quickly along the boulevard and crossed the bridge, from each side of which came humid airs, and they soon reached the school where people had already assembled.
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