Another time, after I had become a student, I was traveling
by rail to the south. It was May. At one of the stations, I believe it
was between Byelgorod and Harkov, I got out of the tram to
walk about the platform.
The shades of evening were already lying on the station gar-
den, on the platform, and on the fields; the station screened off
the sunset, but on the topmost clouds of smoke from the engine,
which were tinged with rosy light, one could see the sun had not
yet quite vanished.
As I walked up and down the platform I noticed that the
greater number of the passengers were standing or walking near
a second-class compartment, and that they looked as though
some celebrated person were in that compartment. Among the
curious whom I met near this compartment I saw, however, an
artillery officer who had been my fellow-traveler, an intelligent,
cordial, and sympathetic fellow—as people mostly are whom we
meet on our travels by chance and with whom we are not long
acquainted.
"What are you looking at there?" I asked.
He made no answer, but only indicated with his eyes a femi-
nine figure. It was a young girl of seventeen or eighteen, wearing
a Russian dress, with her head bare and a little shawl flung care-
lessly on one shoulder; not a passenger, but I suppose a sister or
daughter of the station-master. She was standing near the car-
riage window, talking to an elderly woman who was in the train.
Before I had time to realize what I was seeing, I was suddenly
overwhelmed by the feeling I had once experienced in the Arme-
nian village.
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