ntly beefy face, exhausted by sleepless nights and the jolting of
the train, wore a look of tenderness and of the deepest sadness,
as though in that girl he saw happiness, his own youth, sober-
ness, purity, wife, children; as though he were repenting and
feeling in his whole being that that girl was not his, and that for
him, with his premature old age, his uncouthness, and his beefy
face, the ordinary happiness of a man and a passenger was as far
away as heaven. . . .
The third bell rang, the whistles sounded, and the train slow-
ly moved off. First the guard, the station-master, then the gar-
den, the beautiful girl with her exquisitely sly smile, passed be-
fore our windows. . . .
Putting my head out and looking back, I saw how, looking
after the train, she walked along the platform by the window
where the telegraph clerk was sitting, smoothed her hair, and
ran into the garden. The station no longer screened off the sun-
set, the plain lay open before us, but the sun had already set and
the smoke lay in black clouds over the green, velvety young
corn. It was melancholy in the spring air, and in the darkening
sky, and in the railway carriage.
The familiar figure of the guard came into the carriage, and
he began lighting the candles.
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