"Wait, and suppose there's deception here."
"Hey, you old devil," whispered Zarubin, hastening up to Yevsey. "I've struck a vein of business. Come on, I'll tell you."
Klimkov followed him in silence for a space, then stopped.
"Where shall I go?"
"To a beer saloon. You understand? There's a girl there, Margarita. She has an acquaintance, a milliner. At the milliner's lodging they read books on Saturdays—students and various other people like that. So I'm going to cut them up. Ugh!"
"I won't go," said Yevsey.
"Oh, you! Ugh!"
The long ribbon of strange impressions quickly enmeshed Yevsey's heart, hindering him from an understanding of what was happening. He walked off home unobserved, carrying away with him the premonition of impending misfortune, a misfortune that already lay in hiding and was stretching out irresistible arms to clutch him. It filled his heart with new fear and grief. In expectation of this misfortune he endeavored to walk in the obscurity close against the houses. He recalled the agitated faces and excited voices, the disconnected talk about death, about blood, about the huge graves, into which dozens of bodies had been flung like rubbish.
At home he stood at the window a long time looking at the yellow light of the street-lamp. The pedestrians quickly walked into the circle of its light, then plunged into the darkness again. So in Yevsey's head a faint timid light was casting a pale illumination upon a narrow circle, into which ignorant, cautious grey thoughts, helplessly holding on to one another like blind people, were slowly creeping. Small and lame they gathered into a shy group driven into one place like a swarm of mosquitoes. But suddenly, losing hold of the bond uniting them, they disappeared without leaving a trace, and his soul devoid of them remained like a desert illuminated by a solitary ray from a sorrowful moon.
The days passed as in a delirium, filled with terrible tales of the fierce destruction of people. For Yevsey these days crawled slowly over the earth like black eyeless monsters, swollen with the blood they had devoured. They crawled with their huge jaws wide open, poisoning the air with their stifling, salty odor. People ran and fell, shouted and wept, mingling their tears with their blood. And the blind monster destroyed them, crushed old and young, women and children. They were pushed forward to their destruction by the ruler of their life, fear,—fear leaden-grey as a storm-cloud, powerful as the current of a broad stream.