Having carried the things indoors, Yourii, for want of something else
to do, went down the steps leading to the garden. It was dark as the
grave, and the sky with it vast company of gleaming stars enhanced the
weird effect. There, on one of the steps, sat Lialia; her little grey
form was scarcely perceptible in the gloom.

"Is that you, Yourii?" she asked.

"Yes, it is," he replied, as he sat down beside her. Dreamily she leant
her head on his shoulder, and the fragrance of her fresh, sweet
girlhood touched his senses.

"Did you have good sport?" said Lialia. Then after a pause, she added
softly, "and where is Anatole Pavlovitch? I heard you drive up."

"Your Anatole Pavlovitch is a dirty beast!" is what Yourii, feeling
suddenly incensed, would have liked to say. However, he answered
carelessly: "I really don't know. He had to see a patient."

"A patient," repeated Lialia mechanically. She said no more, but gazed
at the stars.

She was not vexed that Riasantzeff had not come. On the contrary, she
wished to be alone, so that, undisturbed by his presence, she might
give herself up to delicious meditation. To her, the sentiment that
filled her youthful being was strange and sweet and tender. It was the
consciousness of a climax, desired, inevitable, and yet disturbing,
which should close the page of her past life and commence that of her
new one. So new, indeed, that Lialia was to become an entirely
different being.