Splinters of ice crunched beneath their feet, and stars were reflected in the icy puddles.
The sisters were, hastening to the Lawyers' Club to hear a special report on the rumours about the revolution supposed to have broken out in Petersburg.
There had been intoxication in the crisp, spring air.
Dasha shook her head.
"I won't think about it—it's all over and past."
The droshky turned into Arbat Street and drove up a side street on the left.
Dasha's heart began to beat so violently that she felt quite dizzy.
There was the white two-storey house with the attic floor above, where she had lived with Katya and Nikolai Ivanovich after 1915.
Here it was that Telegin had come after his escape from the German prison camp.
Here Katya had met Roshchin.
Dasha had passed through this door, with its peeling paint, on the day of her wedding, and Telegin had handed her into the rubber-tired droshky with the grey horse, and they had driven through the spring twilight, among the still faint lights, towards happiness....
Now the panes in the attic windows were broken and Dasha recognized the wallpaper in her old room, hanging in tatters.
A crow flew out of a window.
"Right or left?" asked the driver.
Dasha consulted the piece of paper in her hand.
The droshky stopped in front of a tall house, the front door of which was boarded up from inside.
Since Dasha was not supposed to ask anybody any questions she had to go up and down back staircases a long time, looking for flat 112a.
Sometimes the sound of her steps caused a door to be opened a crack, on the chain.
There seemed to be a watcher posted behind each door, to warn the inhabitants of the approach of danger.
On the fifth floor Dasha rapped at a door—three times running, and then once, as she had been instructed.
Cautious steps were heard, and someone looked at Dasha through the keyhole, breathing hard.
Then the door was opened by a tall elderly lady with bright-blue, alarmingly prominent eyes.
Dasha silently extended the pasteboard triangle.
The lady said:
"Oh, from Petersburg! Come in, please!"
Dasha passed through a kitchen where obviously nothing had been cooked for a long time, into a big curtained room.
In the semidarkness the outlines of handsome furniture could be made out, bronze surfaces catching the light here and there, but there was an unlived-in air in this room, too.
The lady invited Dasha to sit down on a sofa, and took a seat beside her, gazing at her visitor with her terrifying, wide-open eyes.
"Speak!" she said, in harsh, peremptory tones.
Dasha did her best to gather up her thoughts, and began conscientiously repeating the not very encouraging message with which Kulichok had entrusted her.
The lady clasped her exquisite, ringed hands on her rigid knees, pulling at the fingers till the joints cracked.
"So they know nothing in Petrograd!" she interrupted, her deep voice quivering with emotion.
"You don't know that Colonel Sidorov's house was searched last night.... Evacuation plans and a few mobilization lists were found.... You don't know that Vilenkin was arrested early this morning." Straightening herself with a jerk she rose from the sofa, and drew aside the portiere over the door, turning towards Dasha.
"Come this way.
There's someone here who wants to meet you!"
"The password!" The curt words came from a man standing with his back to the window.
Dasha held out the pasteboard triangle.
"Who gave you that?" (Dasha tried to explain.) "Be more concise!"
He was holding a silk handkerchief to his mouth with his left hand, concealing features which were either naturally swarthy, or made up to appear so.
Washed-out, yellow-rimmed eyes gazed impatiently at Dasha.
Once more he interrupted her.
"Are you aware that, by entering this organization you are risking your life?"
"I am alone and free," said Dasha.
"I know hardly anything about the organization.
Nikanor Yurevich gave me the commission.... I can't go on doing nothing.
I assure you I'm not afraid of work, or...."
"You're nothing but a child...."
The words were uttered in the same jerky tones, but Dasha's brows flew up.
"I'm twenty-four."
"Are you—a woman?" (Dasha made no reply.) "This is very important in the circumstances." (She nodded.) "You need not tell me anything about yourself, I have sized you up.