“Ah! it’s you!” he said, somewhat peevishly, as Yourii thought.
“I wasn’t sleepy. I’ll walk back with you, if you like.”
“Aren’t you cold?” asked Yourii, merely because this distressing cough made him nervous.
“I am always cold,” replied Semenoff irritably.
Yourii felt pained, as if he had purposely touched a sore point.
“Is it a long while since you left the University?” he asked.
Yourii then spoke of the feeling that actually existed among the students and of what they considered most important and essential. He began simply and impassively, but by degrees let himself go, expressing himself with fervour and point.
Then Yourii deplored the lack of revolutionary spirit among the masses. It was plain that he felt this deeply.
“Did you read Bebel’s last speech?” he asked.
Semenoff irritably flourished his stick, which had a crooked handle. His shadow similarly waved a long black arm which made Yourii think of the black wings of some infuriated bird of prey.
“What do I say?” he blurted out. “I say that I am going to die.”
And again he waved his stick and again the sinister shadow imitated his gesture. This time Semenoff also noticed it.
“Do you see?” said he bitterly. “There, behind me, stands Death, watching my every movement. What’s Bebel to me? Just a babbler, who babbles about this. And then some other fool will babble about that. It is all the same to me! If I don’t die to-day, I shall die to-morrow.”
Yourii made no answer. He felt confused and hurt.
“You, for instance,” continued Semenoff, “you think that it’s very important, all this that goes on at the University, and what Bebel says. But what I think is that, if you knew for certain, as I do, that you were going to die you would not care in the least what Bebel or Nietzsche or Tolstoi or anybody else said.”
The moon still shone brightly, and ever the black shadow followed in their wake.
“My constitution’s done for!” said Semenoff suddenly in quite a different voice, thin and querulous. “If you knew how I dread dying…. Especially on such a bright, soft night as this,” he continued plaintively, turning to Yourii his ugly haggard face and glittering eyes. “Everything lives, and I must die. To you that sounds a hackneyed phrase, I feel certain. ‘And I must die.’ But it is not from a novel, not taken from a work written with ‘artistic truth of presentment.’ I really _am_ going to die, and to me the words do not seem hackneyed. One day you will not think that they are, either. I am dying, dying, and all is over!”