Sanine had fallen asleep when a cry from the woman awoke him. The
fellow quickly removed his hand, but not before Sanine could see that
he had been maltreating his wife.

"What a brute you are!" exclaimed Sanine, angrily.

The man started backwards in alarm, as he blinked his small, wicked
eyes, and grinned.

Sanine in disgust went out on to the platform at the rear of the train.
As he passed through the corridor-carriages he saw crowds of passengers
lying prostrate across each other. It was daybreak and their weary
faces looked livid in the grey dawn-light which gave them a helpless,
pained expression.

Standing on the platform Sanine drank in draughts of the cool morning
air.

"What a vile thing man is!" he thought. To get away, if only for a
short while, from all his fellow-men, from the train, with its foul
air, and smoke, and din--it was for that he longed.

Eastward the dawn flamed red. Night's last pale, sickly shadows were
merged and lost in the grey-blue horizon-line beyond the steppe. Sanine
did not waste time in reflection, but, leaving his valise behind him,
jumped off the foot-board.

With a noise like thunder the train rushed past him as he fell on to
the soft, wet sand of the embankment. The red lamp on the last carriage
was a long way off when he rose, laughing.

Sanine uttered a cry of joy. "That's good!" he exclaimed.