The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy Chapter 2 Page 2

was having this effect on Olenin. He remembered all the words of friendship heartily, bashfully, spontaneously (as he believed) addressed to him on his departure. He remembered the clasp of hands, glances, the moments of silence, and the sound of a voice saying, ‘Good-bye, Mitya!’ when he was already in the sledge. He remembered his own deliberate frankness. And all this had a touching significance for him. Not only friends and relatives, not only people who had been indifferent to him, but even those who did not like him, seemed to have agreed to become fonder of him, or to forgive him, before his departure, as people do before confession or death.

‘Perhaps I shall not return from the Caucasus,’ he thought. And he felt that he loved his friends and some one besides. He was sorry for