you; be happy. Don't remember evil against me. We are parting forever
--it must be so, for we ought never to have met. Well, God be with
you."

The train moved off rapidly, its lights soon vanished from sight,
and a minute later there was no sound of it, as though everything
had conspired together to end as quickly as possible that sweet
delirium, that madness. Left alone on the platform, and gazing into
the dark distance, Gurov listened to the chirrup of the grasshoppers
and the hum of the telegraph wires, feeling as though he had only
just waked up. And he thought, musing, that there had been another
episode or adventure in his life, and it, too, was at an end, and
nothing was left of it but a memory. . . . He was moved, sad, and
conscious of a slight remorse. This young woman whom he would never
meet again had not been happy with him; he was genuinely warm and
affectionate with her, but yet in his manner, his tone, and his
caresses there had been a shade of light irony, the coarse condescension
of a happy man who was, besides, almost twice her age. All the time
she had called him kind, exceptional, lofty; obviously he had seemed
to her different from what he really was, so he had unintentionally
deceived her. . . .

Here at the station was already a scent of autumn; it was a cold
evening.

"It's time for me to go north," thought Gurov as he left the platform.
"High time!"

III