And considering that each of them had said something weighty and
convincing, Kuzmitchov and Father Christopher both looked serious
and cleared their throats simultaneously.

Deniska, who had been listening to their conversation without
understanding a word of it, shook his head and, rising in his seat,
lashed at both the bays. A silence followed.

Meanwhile a wide boundless plain encircled by a chain of low hills
lay stretched before the travellers' eyes. Huddling together and
peeping out from behind one another, these hills melted together
into rising ground, which stretched right to the very horizon and
disappeared into the lilac distance; one drives on and on and cannot
discern where it begins or where it ends. . . . The sun had already
peeped out from beyond the town behind them, and quietly, without
fuss, set to its accustomed task. At first in the distance before
them a broad, bright, yellow streak of light crept over the ground
where the earth met the sky, near the little barrows and the
windmills, which in the distance looked like tiny men waving their
arms. A minute later a similar streak gleamed a little nearer, crept
to the right and embraced the hills. Something warm touched
Yegorushka's spine; the streak of light, stealing up from behind,
darted between the chaise and the horses, moved to meet the other
streak, and soon the whole wide steppe flung off the twilight of
early morning, and was smiling and sparkling with dew.

The cut rye, the coarse steppe grass, the milkwort, the wild hemp,
all withered from the sultry heat, turned brown and half dead, now
washed by the dew and caressed by the sun, revived, to fade again.