.. that never. But she will
say: 'Poor Andrey Vassilievitch!' She will pity me!... I think that I
would be happier if I did not see my friend. But I cannot leave
him.... We talk of her often. And yet he despises me and wonders that
she can have loved me...."
I had a fear lest Andrey Vassilievitch should cry. He seemed so
desolate there, giving strange little self-important coughs and
sniffs, beating the ground with his smart little military boot.
Across the river the black wall of cloud had returned and now hung
above the forest of S----, that lay sullenly, in its shadow,
forbidding and thick, itself like a cloud. The world was cold, the
Nestor like a snake.... I shivered, seized by some sudden sense of
coming disaster and trouble. The evenings there were often strangely
chill.
"Look," cried Andrey Vassilievitch, starting to his feet "There's
Marie Ivanovna!"
I turned and saw her standing there, smiling at us, silently and
without movement, like an apparition.
CHAPTER II
MARIE IVANOVNA
It was on July 23 that I first entered the Forest of S----.
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