Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume X).djvu/265

Rh another, and yet are continually looking anxiously at one another.

Not one knows why he has come into this house and what people there are with him. On all the faces uneasiness and despondency. .. all in turn approach the windows and look about intently as though expecting something from without.

Then again they fall to wandering up and down. Among us is a small-sized boy; from time to time he whimpers in the same thin voice, 'Father, I'm frightened!' My heart turns sick at his whimper, and I too begin to be afraid. .. of what? I don't know myself. Only I feel, there is coming nearer and nearer a great, great calamity.

The boy keeps on and on with his wail. Oh, to escape from here! How stifling! How weary! how heavy. . .. But escape is impossible.

That sky is like a shroud. And no wind. . .. Is the air dead or what?

All at once the boy runs up to the window and shrieks in the same piteous voice, 'Look! look! the earth has fallen away!'

'How? fallen away?' Yes; just now there was a plain before the house, and now it stands on a fearful height ! The horizon has sunk, has gone down, and from the very house drops an