Page:Best Russian Short Stories.djvu/463

Rh For an instant her hand touched my head, and the instant was gone.

"Do you know," she said, "I am leaving for the war?"

"Go! But you will not be able to bear it."

"I do not know. But they need help, the same as you or my brother. It is not their fault. Will you remember me?"

"Yes. And you?"

"And I will remember you too. Good-bye!"

"Good-bye for ever!"

And I grew calm and felt happier, as if I had passed through the most terrible, that there is in death and madness. And yesterday, for the first time, I entered my house without any fear, and opened my brother's study and sat for a long time at his table. And when in the night I suddenly awoke as if from a push, and heard the scraping of the dry pen upon the paper, I was not frightened, but thought to myself and with a smile:

"Work on, brother, work on! Your pen is not dry, it is steeped in living human blood. Let your paper seem empty—in its ominous emptiness it is more eloquent of war and reason than all that is written by the most clever men. Work on brother, work on!"

. . . And this morning I read that the battle is still raging, and again I was possessed with a dread fear and a feeling of something falling upon my brain. It is coming, it is here; it is already standing upon the threshold of these empty, light rooms. Remember, remember me, dear girl; I am going mad. Thirty thousand dead, thirty thousand dead! . ..