There, amid the brown and yellow foliage one oak-tree stood whose
leaves were green. On the bench beneath it a yellow cat lay sunning
itself. Yourii gently stroked its soft furry back, as tears rose to his
eyes.
"This is the end! This is the end!" he kept repeating to himself.
Senseless though the words seemed to him, they struck him like an arrow
in the heart.
"No, no! What nonsense! My whole life lies before me. I'm only twenty-
four years old! It's not that. Then, what is it?"
He suddenly thought of Sina, and how impossible it would be to meet her
after that outrageous scene in the wood. Yet how could he possibly help
meeting her? The shame of it overwhelmed him. It would be better to
die.
The cat arched its back and purred with pleasure, the sound was like a
bubbling samovar. Yourii watched it attentively, and then began to
walk up and down.
"My life's so wearisome, so horribly dreary.... Besides, I can't say
if... No, no, I'd rather die than see her again!"
Sina had gone out of his life for ever. The future, cold, grey, void,
lay before him, a long chain of loveless, hopeless days.
"No, I'd rather die!"
Just then, with heavy tread, the coachman passed, carrying a pail of
water, and in it there floated leaves, dead, yellow leaves. The maid-
servant appeared in the doorway, and called out to Yourii. For a long
while he could not understand what she said.
"Yes, yes, all right!" he replied when at last he realized that she was
telling him lunch was ready.
"Lunch?" he said to himself in horror. "To go into lunch! Everything
just as before; to go on living and worrying as to what I ought to do
about Sina, about my own life, and my own acts? So I'd better be quick,
or else, if I go to lunch, there won't be time afterwards."
A strange desire to make haste dominated him, and he trembled violently
in every limb. He felt conscious that nothing was going to happen, and
yet he had a clear presentiment of approaching death; there was a
buzzing in his ears from sheer terror.
With hands tucked under her white apron, the maidservant still stood
motionless on the veranda, enjoying the soft autumnal air.
Like a thief, Yourii crept behind the oak-tree, so that no one should
see him from the veranda, and with startling suddenness shot himself in
the chest.
"Missed fire!" he thought with delight, longing to live, and dreading
death. But above him he saw the topmost branches of the oak-tree
against the azure sky, and the yellow cat that leapt away in alarm.