Page:Andreyev - The Little Angel (Knopf, 1916).djvu/175

Rh street, when suddenly he felt what a thickness of stone houses separated him from the wide, open country, where the free earth breathed softly in the sunshine, and man's eyes might look round to the distant horizon.

It seemed to him that he was suffocating and being blinded, and he felt a desire to run and get quickly out from the stony embrace—and it became a horror to him to think, however fast he might run, still houses, ever houses, would go with him on both sides, and he would be suffocated before he could run beyond the city. Petrov ensconced himself in the first restaurant he came across, but even there he seemed for a long time to be suffocating; so he drank cold water, and wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. But the most terrible thing of all was, that in all the houses there lived human beings, and about all the streets were moving human beings. There were a multitude of them, and all of them were unknown to him—strangers; and all of them lived their own separate life, hidden from the eyes of others; they were without interruption being born, and dying, and there was no beginning nor end to this stream. Whenever Petrov went to the bank, or out for a walk, he saw the same familiar, well-known houses, and everything appeared to him simply an old acquaintance; if, however, he stood still, but for a moment, to fix his attention on some face, then all was quickly and terribly changed. With a feeling of terror and