“When do you go?” she asked mechanically.
“In a few days.”
“You are going as far as St. Petersburg, as far as Moscow, are you not?”
“Yes.”
“Does Russia attract you?”
He answered a little absently, in short, halting sentences. While she listened, she felt she could have cried, and his words sounded to her as if they were spoken through a mist, and she heard him say, as if he were interrupting himself—
“But I wanted to ask you something. I wanted to ask you if, during the time that I am away, you will now and then think of me.”
“Certainly I will think of you,” she said with trembling lips; “you have been so good and so kind to me, and—I shall always hold you in pleasant memory.”
“Thank you,” he softly said. “Don’t you think it sad when people have learned to know each other, and feel sympathy for one another, that they have to part?”
“Yes. But there is so much that is sad in the world.”