Then Natasha went quietly toward the gate. There again she looked a
long time down the road. She had her hand on the gate in an attitude of
expectation, ready, as it were, to swing it wide open before him who
was coming, before him whom she awaited.
Stirring the grey dust of the road the refreshing early wind blew
softly into Natasha’s face, and whispered in her ears persistent, evil
and ominous things, as though it envied her expectation, her tense
calm.
O wind, you who blow everywhere, you know all, you come and you go at
will, and you pursue your way into the endless beyond.
O wind, you who blow everywhere, perchance you have flown into the
regions where he is? Perchance you have brought tidings of him?
If you would but bring hither a single sigh from him, or bear one hence
to him; if but the light, pale shadow of a word.
When the early wind blows a flush comes to Natasha’s face, and a flame
to her eyes; her red lips quiver, a few tears appear, her slender form
sways slightly—all this when the wind blows, the cool, the desolate,
the unmindful, the infinitely wise wind. It blows, and in its blowing
there is the sense of fleeting, irrevocable time.
It blows, and it stings, and it brings sadness, and pitilessly it goes
on.
It goes on, and the frail dust falls back in the road, grey-rose yet
dim in the dawn. It has wiped out all its traces, it has forgotten all
who have walked upon it, and it lies faintly rose in the dawn.
There is a gnawing at the heart from the sweet sadness of expectation.
Some one seems to stand near Natasha, whispering in her ear: “He will
come. He is on the way. Go and meet him.”