After an interval of eight minutes a bell would ring, the engine would whistle, and the _train de luxe_ would flit away into the darkness. The station would be soon deserted after this, and the lights lowered in the buffet and on the platform, where Romashov would remain gazing with melancholy eyes, after the lurid gleam of the red lamp of the rear coach, until it disappeared in the gloom like an extinguished spark. "I shall go to the station for a while," Romashov repeated to himself once more, but when he cast a glance at his big, clumsy goloshes, bespattered with clay and filth, he experienced a keen sense of shame. All the other officers in the regiment wore the same kind of goloshes. Then he noticed the worn buttonholes of his shabby cloak, its many stains, and the fearfully torn lower border that almost degenerated into a sort of fringe at the knees, and he sighed. One day in the previous week he had, as usual, been promenading the platform, looking with curiosity at the express train that had just arrived, when he noticed a tall, extraordinarily handsome lady standing at the open door of a first-class carriage. She was bare-headed, and Romashov managed to distinguish a little, straight, piquant nose, two charming, pouting lips, and a splendid, gleaming black head of hair which, parted in the middle of her forehead, stole down to her coquettish little ears. Behind her, and looking over her shoulder, stood a gigantic young man in a light suit, with a scornful look, and moustaches after the style affected by Kaiser Wilhelm. In fact, he bore a certain resemblance to Wilhelm. The lady looked at Romashov, it seemed to him with an expression of interest, and he said to himself: "The fair unknown's eyes rested with pleasure on the young warrior's tall, well-formed figure." But when, after walking on a few steps, he turned round to catch the lady's eyes again, he saw that both she and her companion were looking after him and laughing. In that moment he saw himself from outside, as it were--his awful goloshes, his cloak, pale face, stiff, angular figure--and experienced a feeling of shame and indignation at the thought of the bombastic, romantic phrase he had just applied to himself. Ah! even at this moment, when he was walking along the road in the gloomy spring evening, he flushed at that torturing recollection. "No, I shall not go to the station," he whispered to himself with bitter hopelessness. "I'll take a little stroll and then go straight home."