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RUDIN up (by the way, did any one ever see a superintendent who had not just been asleep?), and without even waiting for Rudin’s question, informed him in a sleepy voice that there were no horses.

‘How can you say there are no horses,’ said Rudin, ‘when you don’t even know where I am going? I came here with village horses.’

‘We have no horses for anywhere,’ answered the superintendent. ‘But where are you going?’

‘To Sk.’

‘We have no horses,’ repeated the superintendent, and he went away.

Rudin, vexed, went up to the window and threw his cap on the table. He was not much changed, but had grown rather yellow in the last two years; silver threads shone here and there in his curls, and his eyes, still magnificent, seemed somehow dimmed, fine lines, the traces of bitter and disquieting emotions, lay about his lips and on his temples. His clothes were shabby and old, and he had no linen visible anywhere. His best days were clearly over: as the gardeners say, he had gone to seed. 229