and fainter along the path. Someone whistled twice sharply at the foot of the hill; and then all was still again. The rustling of leaves could just be heard; the veranda awning flapped; a faint perfume, floating in the air, came down on the veranda and filled it. I felt silence awkward after what had been said, but what to say I did not know. I looked at him. His eyes, bright in the half-darkness, turned towards me.
“How good life is!” he said.
I sighed, I don’t know why.
“Well?” he asked.
“Life is good,” I repeated after him.
Again we were silent, and again I felt uncomfortable. I could not help fancying that I had wounded him by agreeing that he was old; and I wished to comfort him but did not know how.
“Well, I must be saying goodbye,” he said, rising; “my mother expects me for supper; I have hardly seen her all day.”
“I meant to play you the new sonata,” I said.
“That must wait,” he replied; and I thought that he spoke coldly.
“Goodbye.”
I felt still more certain that I had wounded him, and I was sorry. Kátya and I went to the steps to see him off and stood for a while in the open, looking along the road where he had disappeared from view. When we ceased to hear the sound of his horse’s hoofs, I walked round the house to the veranda, and again sat looking into the garden; and all I wished to see and hear, I still saw and heard for a long time in the dewy mist filled with the sounds of night.