He had torn himself away from all this long ago. He felt a far closer kinship now with the big city to which he was bound by the strong, vitalising bonds of comradeship and labour.

By now he had reached the pine woods, and he paused a moment at the road fork. To his right stood the old prison cut off from the woods by a high spiked fence, and beyond it the white buildings of the hospital.

It was here on this broad common that the hangman’s noose had choked the warm life out of Valya and her comrades. Pavel stood in silence on the spot where the gallows had been, then walked over to the bluff and down to the little cemetery where the victims of the Whiteguard terror lay in their common graves. Loving hands had laid spruce branches on the graves and built a neat green fence around the graveyard. The pines grew straight and slender on the top of the bluff and the young grass spread a silky green carpet over the slopes.

There was a melancholy hush here on the outskirts of the town. The trees whispered gently and the fresh scent of spring rose from the regenerated earth. On this spot Pavel’s comrades had gone bravely to their deaths that life might be beautiful for those born in poverty.

Slowly Pavel raised his hand and removed his cap, his heart filled with sadness.

Man’s dearest possession is life. It is given to him but once, and he must live it so as to feel no torturing regrets for wasted years, never know the burning shame of a mean and petty past; so live that, dying, he might say: all my life, all my strength were given to the finest cause in all the world—the fight for the Liberation of Mankind. And one must make use of every moment of life, lest some sudden illness or tragic accident cut it short.

With these reflections, Korchagin turned away from the cemetery.

﹝前苏联﹞奥斯特洛夫斯基（Nikolai Ostrovsky）