It happened that I had known Alexei Petrovitch
very well and the sound of his name brought back to me so vividly events
and persons with whom we had both been connected that I had difficulty
in controlling my sudden emotion. Markovitch invited me to his house. He
lived, he told me, with his wife in a flat in the Anglisky Prospect; his
sister-in-law and another of his wife's uncles, a brother of Alexei
Petrovitch, also lived with them. I said that I would be very glad to
come.
It is impossible to describe how deeply, in the days that followed, I
struggled against the attraction that this invitation presented to me. I
had succeeded during all these months in avoiding any contact with the
incidents or characters of the preceding year. I had written no letters
and had received none; I had resolutely avoided meeting any members of
my old Atriad when they came to the town.
But now I succumbed. Perhaps something of my old vitality and curiosity
was already creeping back into my bones, perhaps time was already
dimming my memories--at any rate, on an evening early in October I paid
my call. Alexei Petrovitch was not present; he was on the Galician
front, in Tarnople.
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