"It seems to me," he said, "she said she was going to Ekaterinoslav.... I believe she even said something about working in some confectioner's shop in despair.... I thought she would write, but there hasn't been a line, she's vanished into thin air."
Refusing to go in for a glass of tea, Roshchin went straight back to the station.
There would be a train to Ekaterinoslav in the evening.
He went into the first-class waiting room, sat down on a hard oak bench, and leaned forward on his elbow, shading his eyes with the palm of his hand, remaining thus motionless through the long hours of waiting....
Somebody sank down beside Vadim Petrovich with a sigh of relief, and the evident intention of remaining there for some time.
Many had come and gone before him, but this latest comer sat there with his leg and thigh jerking so violently that the whole seat shook.
He neither departed nor stopped shaking his leg.
Without removing his hand from his eyes, Roshchin said:
"Look here—couldn't you stop shaking your leg?"
"Sorry—a bad habit," came the amiable reply.
And after that the stranger sat quite still.
The voice struck Vadim Petrovich as familiar—it seemed to be bound up with remote, exquisite memories....
Without removing his hand, Roshchin peered at his neighbour through the chinks between his fingers.
It was Telegin.
His legs in the muddy boots stretched out, his hands folded over his stomach, he seemed to be dozing, with the nape of his neck resting against the high back of the seat.
He wore a tight tunic, which caught him under the armpits, and the lieutenant colonel's shoulder straps on it were new.
On his lean, clean-shaven face was the fixed smile of a man resting after inexpressible fatigue....
Next to Katya, Telegin was the person dearest to Roshchin in the whole world—as near as a brother, a beloved friend.
He dwelt in the light reflected from the charm of the sisters—Katya and Dasha.... Vadim Petrovich almost cried out in his astonishment, almost fell on the neck of Ivan Ilyich.
But Telegin neither opened his eyes nor moved.
The moment had passed.
Roshchin realized that this was an enemy next to him.
He had known by the end of May that Telegin was in the Red Army, had joined it of his own free will and was in high favour.
His clothes were obviously not his own, they had probably been taken from some fallen officer whom he must have first killed. He wore the insignia of a lieutenant colonel, and Roshchin was sure he had formerly been only a captain. Roshchin was suddenly overcome with the feeling of nausea which so often ended in one of his outbursts of bitter loathing: Telegin could only be here as a Bolshevik spy....
He ought to go and inform the military commandant immediately.
Two months ago he would not have hesitated for a moment.
But he seemed to have grown into the bench—he felt utterly powerless.
And then the disgust somehow died down.... Ivan Ilyich, a Red officer, there he was beside him, the same as ever—tired, the essence of goodness.... He wasn't doing it for money, or for his own advancement—that was nonsense!
Calm, rational, if he had joined the Red Army it was because he believed the cause a good one....
"Just like me—just like me.... Denounce him—and an hour from now Dasha's husband, Katya's brother, and mine, would be sprawling on a rubbish heap at the foot of a fence, his boots dragged off...."
His throat contracted with horror.
He seemed to shrink into himself.... What was he to do?
Get up and go away?
But Telegin might recognize him, lose his head, call out.
How could he save him?
Roshchin and Ivan Ilyich sat motionless, as if asleep, side by side on the oak bench.
The station was empty at this hour.
The watchman closed the doors to the platforms.
Then Telegin, not opening his eyes, said:
"Thanks, Vadim."
Roshchin's hand began to tremble violently.
Ivan Ilyich rose lightly and walked with calm steps towards the exit to the square, never turning his head.
A minute later, Roshchin rushed after him.
He ran all round the station square, where, on the asphalt pavement, melting in the white rays of the sun, swarthy street vendors nodded over their trays beneath dangling bundles of smoked fish.... The leaves on the trees were burnt, the very air, saturated with the dust of the city, was burnt.
"If I could just have embraced him—nothing more!" Red circles of torrid heat swam in front of Roshchin's eyes.
Telegin seemed to have been swallowed up by the earth.
Just when the glow of sunset was fading away over the steppe, and Roshchin, clambering on to the upper berth in the railway carriage, had fallen asleep to the thudding of the wheels, she whom he was seeking, for whom his soul; sick with blood and hate, was yearning, his wife Katya, was jogging over the steppe on a cart.
Her shoulders were wrapped in a shawl.
Beside her sat the beauteous Matryona Krasilnikova.
The rickety cart jingled metallically.