Page:The Dial (Volume 73).djvu/81

Rh through the paper, and spring-like through the upper pane of the window the April moon shone silvery, high up in the not yet darkened sky. Kasimir Stanislavovitch lit a candle, sadly illuminating his empty, casual home, and sat down on the sofa, feeling on his face the freshness of evening Thus he sat for a long time. He did not ring the bell, gave no orders, locked himself in—all this seemed suspicious to the porter who had seen him enter his room with his shuffling feet and taking the key out of the door in order to lock himself in from the inside. Several times the porter stole up on tiptoe to the door and looked through the key-hole: Kasimir Stanislavovitch was sitting on the sofa, trembling and wiping his face with a handkerchief, and weeping so bitterly, so copiously that the brown dye came off and was smeared over his face.

At night he tore the cord off the blind, and, seeing nothing through his tears, began to fasten it to the hook of the clothes-peg. But the guttering candle flickered and terrible dark waves swam and flickered over the locked room: he was old, weak—and he himself was well aware of it No. It was not in his power to die by his own hand!

In the morning he started for the railway station about three hours before the train left. At the station he quietly walked about among the passengers, with his tear-stained eyes on the ground; and he would stop unexpectedly before one and another, and in a low voice, evenly, but without expression, he would say rather quickly: "For God's sake I am in a desperate position  My fare to Briansk  If only a few copecks "

And some passengers, trying not to look at his top-hat, at the worn velvet collar of his overcoat, at the dreadful face with the faded violet whiskers, hurriedly and with confusion gave him something.

And then, rushing out of the station on to the platform, he got mixed in the crowd and disappeared into it, while in the Versailles, in the room which for two days had, as it were, belonged to him, they carried out the slop-pail, opened the windows to the April sun and fresh air, noisily moved the furniture, swept up and threw out the dust—and with the dust there fell under the table, under the table-cloth which slid down to the floor, his torn note, which he had forgotten with the cucumbers:

"I beg that no one be accused of my death. I was at the wedding of my only daughter, who "