Alexander Alexandrovitch Agrenev, engineer, spent all day in the
quarry, laying and exploding dynamite. In the village below was a
factory, its chimneys belching smoke; and creaking wagonettes sped
backwards and forwards from the parapet. Above on the cliff stood
huge sappy pines. All day the sky was grey and cloudy, and the smoke
from the chimneys spread like a low pall over the earth. The dynamite
exploded with a great detonation and expulsion of smoke.
The autumn darkness, with its sharp, acid, sweet tang, was already
falling as Agrenev proceeded homeward with the head-miner,
Eduardovich Bitska, a Lithuanian, and the lights from the engine-
house shone brightly in the distance.
The engineer's quarters lay in a forest-clearing on the further side
of the valley; the cement structures of its small buildings stood out
in monotonous uniformity; the blue light of its torches flared and
hissed, throwing back dark shadows from the trunks and branches of
the pine-trees, which laced, interlaced, and glided dusky and
intangible between the tall straight stems, finally melting amidst
the foliage.
His skin jacket was sticking to Agrenev's back, as, no doubt,
Bitska's was also.
"My missus will soon be home," Bitska said cheerfully--he had
recently been married. He spoke in broken Russian, with a foreign
accent.
In Agrenev's house it was dark. The warm glow from the torches
outside fell on the window-ledges and illuminated them, but inside
the only light was that visible through the crevices of his wife's
tightly closed door: his beloved wife--so aloof--so strange. The rain
had started, and its drip on the roof was like the sound of water-
falls: he changed, washed, took up a newspaper. The maid entered and
announced that tea was ready.
His wife--tall, slim, beautiful, and strange--was standing by the
window, her back to him, a book in her hand; a tumbler was on the
window-sill close beside her. She did not turn round as he entered,
merely murmuring: "Have some tea."
The electric light gave a brilliant glow. The freshly varnished
woodwork smelt of polish. She did not say another word, but returned
to her book, her delicate fingers turning over the leaves as,
standing with bent head, she read.
"Are you going out this evening, Anna?" he asked.
"Eh? No, I am staying in."
"Is there anyone coming?"
"Eh? No, nobody. Are _you_ going out?"
"I am not sure. I am going to-morrow on Detachment duty for a week."
"Eh? Oh yes, on Detachment."
Always the same! No interest in him; indifferent, absorbed in other
things. How he longed to stay and talk to her, on and on, of
everything; of the utter impossibility of life without love or
sympathy, of the intensity of his own love, and the melancholy of his
evenings. But he was silent.
"Is Asya asleep?" he inquired at last.
"Yes, she is asleep."
A nickel tea-pot and a solitary tumbler stood on the table with its
white cloth falling in straight folds. The ticking of the clock
sounded monotonously.
"She does not deceive, nor betray, nor leave me," he thought; "but
she is strange, strange--and a mother!"