The bushes became moist and a fresh breeze blew from the river. Then Alkina came close to Trirodov and whispered to him:
“If you are glad that she loves you, tell me, and I will share your gladness.”
Trirodov pressed her hand warmly.
The quiet, dim river lay before them. Beyond it the labours and dangers of life created by the dream of liberation awaited them.
Soon the mist would rise above the river under the cold and witching moon—soon the misty veil of fantasy would lighten the tedious and commonplace life, and behind the veil of mist there would rise in dim outlines another kind of life, creative and unattainable.
CHAPTER XV
That night the streets of Skorodozh were alive with noises—which gradually died away. The frightened townsmen sprang from their warm beds, and peering through the half-opened blinds into the dark streets saw those who had been caught in the woods led away in the custody of the Cossacks. Then when the stamp of horses’ hoofs and the hum of human voices subsided, the residents quietly went back to their beds, and were soon asleep. Lady Godiva would have been highly pleased with such modest people: they looked, yet did not show themselves, and did not hinder.
They went to bed again, and muttered something to their wives. The freedom-loving bourgeois grumbled: