I got up in the morning with a headache. My emotion of the previous day had vanished. It was replaced by a dreary sense of blankness and a sort of sadness I had not known till then, as though something had died in me.

‘Why is it you’re looking like a rabbit with half its brain removed?’ said Lushin on meeting me. At lunch I stole a look first at my father, then at my mother: he was composed, as usual; she was, as usual, secretly irritated. I waited to see whether my father would make some friendly remarks to me, as he sometimes did� . But he did not even bestow his everyday cold greeting upon me. ‘Shall I tell Zina�da all?’ I wondered� . ‘It’s all the same, anyway; all is at an end between us.’ I went to see her, but told her nothing, and, indeed, I could not even have