'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 Zinaïda once more.
XXI
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.'
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