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Four years passed I had just left the university, and did not know exactly what to do withabout for a ti I ot married, and had entered the civil service; but I found no change in him He fell into ecstasies in just the saain

'You know,' he told s, 'Madame Dolsky's here'

'What Mada Princess Zasyekin ere all in love with, and you too Do you reardens?'

'She married a Dolsky?'

'Yes'

'And is she here, in the theatre?'

'No: but she's in Petersburg She ca abroad'

'What sort of fellow is her husband?' I asked

'A splendid felloith property He's a colleague of mine in Moscow You can well understand--after the scandalyou nificantly) 'it was no easy task for her to e; there were consequencesbut with her cleverness, everything is possible Go and see her; she'll be delighted to see you She's prettier than ever'

Meidanov gaveat the Hotel Demut Old o to see my former 'flame' But some business happened to turn up; a week passed, and then another, and when at last I went to the Hotel Demut and asked for Madame Dolsky, I learnt that four days before, she had died, almost suddenly, in childbirth

I felt a sort of stab at ht have seen her, and had not seen her, and should never see her--that bitter thought stungreproach 'She is dead!' I repeated, staring stupidly at the hall-porter I slowlyAll the past swam up and rose at once before oal to which that young, ardent, brilliant life had striven, all haste and agitation! I mused on this; I fancied those dear features, those eyes, those curls--in the narrow box, in the da here, not far from me--while I was still alive, and, ht all this; I strained ination, and yet all the while the lines: 'From lips indifferent of her death I heard, Indifferently I listened to it, too,' were echoing in ; thou art master, as it were, of all the treasures of the universe--even sorrow gives thee pleasure, even grief thou canst turn to thy profit; thou art self-confident and insolent; thou sayest, 'I alone a--look you!'--but thy days fly by all the while, and vanish without trace or reckoning; and everything in thee vanishes, like wax in the sun, like snow And, perhaps, the whole secret of thy char able to think thou wilt do anything; lies just in thy throwing to the winds, forces which thou couldst nothi that he is justified in saying, 'Oh, what ht I not have done if I had not wasted my time!'