Page:Best Russian Short Stories.djvu/467

Rh with which I was incautiously holding his head. He bit off my finger, but I twisted his head clean off: how do you think—are we quits? How they did not all wake up I cannot imagine. One could hear their bones crackling and their bodies being hacked. Afterwards we stripped all naked and divided their clothes amongst ourselves. My friend, don't get angry over a joke. With your susceptibility you will say this savours of marauding, but then we are almost naked ourselves; our clothes are quite worn-out. I have been wearing a woman's jacket for a long time, and resemble more a. . . than an officer of a victorious army. By the bye, you are, I believe, married, and it is not quite right for you to read such things. But. . . you understand? Women. D—n it, I am young, and thirst for love! Stop a minute: I believe it was you who was engaged to be married? It was you, was it not, who showed me the portrait of a young girl and told me she was your promised bride?—and there was something sad, something very and mournful underneath it. And you cried. That was a long time ago, and I remember it but confusedly; there is no time for softness at war: And you cried. What did you cry about?. What was there written that was as sad and mournful as a drooping flower? And you kept crying and crying. . . . Were you not ashamed, an officer, to cry?

". . . The crows are cawing. Do you hear, friend, the crows are cawing. What do they want?"

Further on the pencil-written lines were effaced and it was impossible to decipher the signature. And strange to say the dead man called forth no compassion in me, I