beside me. All this I recognised distinctly, but at the same time
I was troubled by an oppressive and unpleasant dread that Kisotchka
would turn back, and that I should not manage to say to her what
had to be said. Never at any other time in my life have thoughts
of a higher order been so closely interwoven with the basest animal
prose as on that night. . . . It was horrible!

"Not far from the cemetery we found a cab. When we reached the High
Street, where Kisotchka's mother lived, we dismissed the cab and
walked along the pavement. Kisotchka was silent all the while, while
I looked at her, and I raged at myself, 'Why don't you begin? Now's
the time!' About twenty paces from the hotel where I was staying,
Kisotchka stopped by the lamp-post and burst into tears.

"'Nikolay Anastasyitch!' she said, crying and laughing and looking
at me with wet shining eyes, 'I shall never forget your sympathy
. . . . How good you are! All of you are so splendid--all of you!
Honest, great-hearted, kind, clever. . . . Ah, how good that is!'

"She saw in me a highly educated man, advanced in every sense of
the word, and on her tear-stained laughing face, together with the
emotion and enthusiasm aroused by my personality, there was clearly
written regret that she so rarely saw such people, and that God had
not vouchsafed her the bliss of being the wife of one of them. She
muttered, 'Ah, how splendid it is!' The childish gladness on her
face, the tears, the gentle smile, the soft hair, which had escaped
from under the kerchief, and the kerchief itself thrown carelessly
over her head, in the light of the street lamp reminded me of the
old Kisotchka whom one had wanted to stroke like a kitten.