His own vision looked out at him from the mirror; rather a solemn, grave one, he thought. Trying to persuade himself that he attached no importance to what he had just done, he put out his tongue and moved away from the glass. “Fate would not have it so,” he said aloud, and the sound of the words seemed to cheer him. “I wonder if anyone saw me?” he thought, as he looked round in alarm. Yet all was still, and nothing could be heard moving behind the closed door. To him it was as if nothing in the world existed and suffered in this terrible solitude but himself. He put out the lamp, and to his amazement perceived through a chink in the shutter the first red rays of dawn. Then he lay down to sleep, and in dream was aware of something gigantic that bent over him, exhaling fiery breath. CHAPTER XXIII. Gently, caressingly, the dusk, fragrant with the scent of blossoms, descended. Sanine sat at a table near the window, striving to read in the waning light a favourite tale of his. It described the lonely, tragic death of an old bishop, who, clad in his sacerdotal vestments and holding a jewelled cross, expired amid the odour of incense. In the room the temperature was as cool as that outside, for the soft evening breeze played round Sanine’s powerful frame, filling his lungs, and lightly caressing his hair. Absorbed in his book, he read on, while his lips moved from time to time, and he seemed like a big boy devouring some story of adventures among Indians. Yet, the more he read, the sadder became his thoughts. How much there was in this world that was senseless and absurd! How dense and uncivilized men were, and how far ahead of them in ideas he was! The door opened and some one entered. Sanine looked up. “Aha!” he exclaimed, as he shut the book, “what’s the news?” Novikoff smiled sadly, as he took the other’s hand. “Oh! nothing,” he said, as he approached the window, “It’s all just the same as ever it was.” From where he sat Sanine could only see Novikoff’s tall figure silhouetted against the evening sky, and for a long while he gazed at him without speaking. When Sanine first took his friend to see Lida, who now no longer resembled the proud, high-spirited girl of heretofore, neither she nor Novikoff said a word to each other about all that lay nearest to their hearts. He knew that, after having spoken, they would be unhappy, yet doubly so if they kept silence. What to him was plain and easy they could only accomplish, he felt sure, after much suffering. “Be it so,” thought he, “for suffering purifies and ennobles.” Now, however, the propitious moment for them had come.