He joked, and her mind roved thoughtfully through her past.

It seemed to her strangely like a quagmire uniformly strewn with hillocks, which were covered with poplars trembling in constant fear; with low firs, and with white birches straying between the hillocks.

The birches grew slowly, and after standing for five years on the unstable, putrescent soil, they dried up, fell down, and rotted away.

She looked at this picture, and a vague feeling of insufferable sadness overcame her.

The figure of a girl with a sharp, determined face stood before her.