Lida did not go home, but hurriedly turned her steps in an opposite
direction. The streets were empty, the air stifling. Close to the wall
and fence lay the short shadows, vanquished by the triumphant sun.
Through mere force of habit, Lida opened her parasol. She never noticed
if it was cold or hot, light or dark. She walked swiftly past the
fences all dusty and overgrown with weeds, her head bowed, her eyes
downcast. Now and again she met a few gasping pedestrians half-
suffocated by the heat. Over the town lay silence, the oppressive
silence of a summer afternoon.
A little white puppy had followed Lida. After eagerly sniffing her
dress, it ran on in front, and, looking round, wagged its tail, as if
to say that they were comrades. At the corner of a street stood a funny
little fat boy, a portion of whose shirt peeped out at the back of his
breeches. With cheeks distended and fruit-stained, he was vigorously
blowing a wooden pipe.
Lida beckoned to the little puppy and smiled at the boy. Yet she did so
almost unconsciously; her soul was imprisoned. An obscure force,
separating her from the world, swept her onward, past the sunlight, the
verdure, and all the joy of life, towards a black gulf that by the dull
anguish within her she knew to be near.
An officer of her acquaintance rode by. On seeing Lida he reined in his
horse, a roan, whose glossy coat shone in the sunlight.
"Lidia Petrovna!" he cried, in a pleasant, cheery voice, "Where are you
going in all this heat?"
Mechanically her eyes glanced at his forage-cap, jauntily poised on his
moist, sunburnt brow. She did not speak, but merely smiled her
habitual, coquettish smile.
At that moment, ignorant herself as to what might happen, she echoed
his question: "Ah! where, indeed?"
She no longer felt angry with Sarudine. Hardly knowing why she had gone
to him, for it seemed impossible to live without him, or bear her grief
alone. Yet it was as if he had just vanished from her life. The past
was dead. That which remained concerned her alone; and as to that she
alone could decide.
Her brain worked with feverish haste, her thoughts being yet clear and
plain. The most dreadful thing was, that the proud, handsome Lida would
disappear, and in her stead there would be a wretched being,
persecuted, besmirched, defenceless. Pride and beauty must be retained.
Therefore, she must go, she must get away to some place where the mud
could not touch her. This fact clearly established, Lida suddenly
imagined herself encircled by a void; life, sunlight, human beings, no
longer existed; she was alone in their midst, absolutely alone. There
was no escape; she must die, she must drown herself. In a moment this
became such a certainty that it was as if round her a wall of stone had
arisen to shut her off from all that had been, and from all that might
be.