broke off his story and went out. For two minutes he could be heard
outside comforting his dog. "Good dog! poor dog!"

"Our Nikolay Anastasyevitch is fond of talking," said Von Schtenberg,
laughing. "He is a good fellow," he added after a brief silence.

Returning to the hut, the engineer filled up our glasses and, smiling
and stroking his chest, went on:

"And so my attack was unsuccessful. There was nothing for it, I put
off my unclean thoughts to a more favourable occasion, resigned
myself to my failure and, as the saying is, waved my hand. What is
more, under the influence of Kisotchka's voice, the evening air,
and the stillness, I gradually myself fell into a quiet sentimental
mood. I remember I sat in an easy chair by the wide-open window and
glanced at the trees and darkened sky. The outlines of the acacias
and the lime trees were just the same as they had been eight years
before; just as then, in the days of my childhood, somewhere far
away there was the tinkling of a wretched piano, and the public had
just the same habit of sauntering to and fro along the avenues, but
the people were not the same. Along the avenues there walked now
not my comrades and I and the object of my adoration, but schoolboys
and young ladies who were strangers. And I felt melancholy. When
to my inquiries about acquaintances I five times received from
Kisotchka the answer, 'He is dead,' my melancholy changed into the
feeling one has at the funeral service of a good man. And sitting
there at the window, looking at the promenading public and listening
to the tinkling piano, I saw with my own eyes for the first time
in my life with what eagerness one generation hastens to replace
another, and what a momentous significance even some seven or eight