The lieutenant sat on the deck under the awning feeling like he’d aged ten years.
It took the main hero only one day to experience feelings and emotions people usually experience in years.The author indicates that love is unpredictable, it is not something to be subdued or moderated. This feeling can change a person completely within a very short time and leave a mark that cannot be erased in years. This is what happened in the story, love made the main hero re-comprehend the essence of life, changed his inner world.
There was blackness ahead, and there were lights.
The contrast created by blackness and lights represents the thin line between pleasure and sorrow that love can bring. It is the main theme of the story, as well as of almost all Bunin’s stories, that love is not just delight, it is pain, but it is pain that is worthy of all those sweet moments experienced at the moment of delight. These words are some kind of a prediction.
