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I gave a sigh. I did not like to tell a lie, while I was ashamed to tell the truth.

'Well, never mind,' Lushin went on, 'don't be shy.

The great thing is to lead a normal life, and not be the slave of your passions.

What do you get if not? Wherever you are carried by the tide – it's all a bad look-out; a man must stand on his own feet, if he can get nothing but a rock to stand on.

Here, I've got a cough ... and Byelovzorov – have you heard anything of him?'

'No. What is it?'

'He's lost, and no news of him; they say he's gone away to the Caucasus. A lesson to you, young man. And it's all from not knowing how to part in time, to break out of the net. You seem to have got off very well. Mind you don't fall into the same snare again. Good-bye.'

'I shan't,' I thought... 'I shan't see her again.' But I was destined to see Zinaida once more.

My father used every day to ride out on horse-back.

He had a splendid English mare, a chestnut piebald, with a long slender neck and long legs, an inexhaustible and vicious beast.

Her name was Electric.

No one could ride her except my father.

One day he came up to me in a good humour, a frame of mind in which I had not seen him for a long while; he was getting ready for his ride, and had already put on his spurs.

I began entreating him to take me with him.

'We'd much better have a game of leap-frog,' my father replied. 'You'll never keep up with me on your cob.'

'Yes, I will; I'll put on spurs too.'

'All right, come along then.'

We set off.

I had a shaggy black horse, strong, and fairly spirited.

It is true it had to gallop its utmost, when Electric went at full trot, still I was not left behind.

I have never seen any one ride like my father; he had such a fine carelessly easy seat, that it seemed that the horse under him was conscious of it, and proud of its rider.

We rode through all the boulevards, reached the 'Maidens' Field', jumped several fences (at first I had been afraid to take a leap, but my father had a contempt for cowards, and I soon ceased to feel fear), twice crossed the river Moskva, and I was under the impression that we were on our way home, especially as my father of his own accord observed that my horse was tired, when suddenly he turned off away from me at the Crimean ford, and galloped along the river-bank.

I rode after him.

When he had reached a high stack of old timber, he slid quickly off Electric, told me to dismount, and giving me his horse's bridle, told me to wait for him there at the timber-stack, and, turning off into a small street, disappeared.

Chapter XXI

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