had no effect on Nezhdanov: he did not notice them. He seemed shut in by a sort of cloud; it stood like a veil of half-darkness between him and the rest of the world─and, strange to say across this veil he could discern only three faces, and all three women's faces, and all three had their eyes persistently fastened upon him. They were: Madame Sipyagin, Mashurina, and Marianna. What did it mean? And why precisely these three? What had they in common? And what did they want with him? He went early to bed, but could not get to sleep. He was haunted by thoughts, gloomy, though not exactly painful . . . thoughts of the inevitable end, of death. They were familiar thoughts. For long he was turning them this way and that, at one time shuddering at the probability of annihilation, then welcoming it, almost rejoicing in it He felt at last the peculiar excitement he knew so well.. . . He got up, sat down to his writing-table, and, after thinking a little, almost without correction, wrote the following verses in his secret book;
'My dear one, when I come
To die─this is my will:
Heap up and burn my writings all,
That they may die in the same hour!
With flowers then deck me all about
And let the sun shine in my room;
Musicians place about my doors,
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