"The next day I cursed my folly. I do not know to this day why I did
not break the engagement, it would have been sufficiently easy, but
break it I did not and a week later, reluctantly, I went. Do you know
how houses and streets of which you have observed nothing, afterwards,
called out by some important event, leap into detail? That night I
swear that I saw nothing of that little street behind the Mariinsky
Theatre. It was a fine 'white night' at the end of May and the theatre
was in a bustle of arrivals because it was nearly eight o'clock. Not
at all the hour of Russian dinner, as you know, but Andrey
Vassilievitch always liked to be as English as possible. I tell you
that I saw nothing of the street and yet now I know that at the door
of the little _trakteer_ there were two men and a woman laughing, that
an _isvotchik_ was drawn up in front of a high white block of flats,
asleep, his head fallen on his breast, that the wonderful light,
faintly blue and misty like gauze hung down from the sky, down over
the houses, but falling not quite on to the pavement which was hard
and ugly and grey.
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