Romashov shut his eyes, and shrivelled up with shame and rage. He feared that, at the next movement on his part, all the officers at mess would rush to the window and discover him. For one or two minutes he did not stir; then with his head hidden in his cloak, and scarcely venturing to breathe, he stole on tip-toe along the wall, out through the gate to the street, the moonlit portion of which he crossed by a couple of brisk jumps so as to reach the deep protecting shadow of the high hoarding on the other side. Romashov sauntered for a long time that evening about the streets of the town. Often he did not even know where he was. Once he stopped in the shadow right under Nikoläiev's house, the green-painted sheet-iron roof and white walls of which were brilliantly illumined by the moon's clear bright rays. Not a soul was in the street, not a sound was audible. The sharply marked outlines of the shadows from the houses opposite divided the street into two halves. Behind the thick dark-red curtains in one of the rooms at the Nikoläievs' a lamp was burning. "My beloved," whispered Romashov, "don't you feel how near I am to you, how much I love you?" He pressed his hands to his chest, and had much difficulty in restraining his tears. Suddenly, however, he got the idea that, in spite of the distance and the house's thick walls, he might possibly make Shurochka notice his presence. With closed teeth and hands so tightly clenched that the nails were driven into the flesh, and with a sensation as if icy-cold ants were creeping over his body, he began to concentrate all his will-power to a single object. "Get up from your sofa. Come to the window. Draw the curtain. Look, look through the window out into the street. Obey. I command you; come to the window at once." But the curtain remained motionless. "You don't hear me, then," whispered Romashov, with sorrow and indignation in his heart. "You are sitting by the lamp beside him, calm, indifferent, and as beautiful as ever. Oh, my God, my God, how wretched I am!" He sighed deeply, and with bowed head and crippled with weariness he continued his melancholy wandering. He even passed Nasanski's place, but it was dark there. It seemed to Romashov as if a white spectre had quickly fluttered past one of the house's dark windows. A shudder ran through him, and he dared not call to Nasanski. Some days later Romashov remembered this fantastic--nay, idiotic--ramble as a strange, far-off dream which, nevertheless, could not be forgotten. He had even been in the Jewish cemetery, but how he got there he could not tell himself. This silent and mysterious burial-ground lay beyond the town, on a height, and was surrounded by a low white wall. From the luxuriant, slumbering grass arose the icy-cold gravestones, simple, unadorned, like each other, and casting behind them long, narrow shadows. And over all this gloomy place reigned the grave, solemn, austere note of solitude.