"I will go to the Exchange and complain! Not even letting one
rest!...Stealing in to an undressed woman!..."
Lina jabbered her words after her like a parrot. Sergius ran in.
"Leave off, please," he begged. "It is I who am responsible. Let
Leontyevna sleep."
"Certainly, I am not one of the heirs," the general retorted
smoothly.
The night and the frost swept over the Volga, the Steppe, and
Saratov. The general was unable to sleep. Kseniya and Lena were
crying in the attic. Constantine arrived home late, and noiselessly
crept in to Leontyevna.
Bluish patches of moonlight fell in through the windows.
The water pipes froze in the night and burst.
THE CROSSWAYS
Forest, thickets, marshes, fields, a tranquil sky--and the crossways!
The sky is overcast at times with dove-coloured clouds; the forest
now gabbles, now groans in the glittering summer sunshine.
The crossways creep and crawl like a winding thread, without
beginning and without end. Sometimes their stretch tires and vexes--
one wants to go by a shorter route and turns aside, goes astray,
comes back to the former way. Two wheel-tracks, ripple grass, a foot-
path and around them, besides sky or rye or snow or trees, are the
crossways, without beginning or end or limit. And over them pass the
peasants singing their low toned songs. At times these are sorrowful,
as endless as the crossways themselves: Russia was borne in these
songs, born with them, from them.
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