Trirodov replied:
“The conscience, ripened to universal fullness, says that every fault is my fault.”
“And that every action is my action,” added Elisaveta.
“An action is so impossible!” said Trirodov. “A miracle is impossible. I wish to break loose from the claims of this dull existence.”
“You speak of love,” said Elisaveta, “as of a thing unrealized. But you had a wife.”
“Yes,” said Trirodov sadly. “The short moments passed by rapidly. Was there love? I cannot say. There was passion, a smouldering—and death.”
“Life will again bring its delights to you,” said Elisaveta confidently.
And Trirodov answered:
“Yes, it will be a different life, but what’s that to me? If one could only be quite different, and simple—say a small child, a boy with bare feet, with a fishing-rod in his hands, his mouth yawning good-naturedly. Only children really live. I envy them frightfully. I envy frightfully the simple folk, the altogether simple folk, remote from these cheerless comprehensions of the intellect. Children live—only children. Ripeness already marks the beginning of death.”
“To love—and to die?” asked Elisaveta with a smile.
She listened to the sound of these beautiful, sad words and repeated them quietly:
“To love—and to die!”
And as she listened again, she heard him say:
“She loved—and she died.”
“What was the name of your first wife?” asked Elisaveta.
She was amazed at herself for uttering the word “first,” as there had been only one; and her face became suffused slowly with pink.
Trirodov fell into thought; he appeared not to have heard her question, and was silent. Elisaveta did not repeat it. He suddenly smiled and said:
“You and I feel ourselves to be living people here, and what can there be for us more certain than our life, our sensation of life? And yet it is possible that you and I are not living people at all, but only characters in a novel, and that the author of this novel is not at all concerned with its external verisimilitude. His capricious imagination had taken this dark earth for its material, and out of this dark, sinful earth he grew these strange black maples and these mighty black poplars and these twittering birds in the bushes and us.”
Elisaveta looked at him in astonishment and said with a smile:
“I hope that the novel will be interesting and beautiful. Let it even end in death! But tell me, why do you write so little?”
With unexpected passion, almost with exasperation, Trirodov replied:
“Why should I write volumes of tales on how they fell in love and why they fell out of love, and all that? I write only that which comes from myself, that which has not yet been said. So much has already been said; it is far better to add a simple word of one’s own than write volumes of superfluities.”
“Eternal themes are always one and the same,” said Elisaveta. “Do they not constitute the content of great art?”
“We never originate,” said Trirodov. “We always appear in the world with a ready inheritance. We are the eternal successors. That is why we are not free. We see the world with others’ eyes, the eyes of the dead. But I live only when I make everything my own.”
And while these two spent their hours in conversing, Piotr usually made his way somewhere to the top of the house. He sometimes descended with his eyes red—red from tears or from the vigorous, high wind. His days dragged on miserably. His hate and jealousy of Trirodov now and again tormented him.
Piotr sometimes made unpleasant, pitiful scenes before Elisaveta. He loved her and he hated her. He would have killed her—had he dared! And he had not the force to hate either Elisaveta or Trirodov to the bitter end.
When he learned to know Trirodov better his hate lost something of its venom, his malice no longer irritated him like nettles. He looked with curiosity upon them and began to understand. The agony of his unconscious fury was replaced by a clear contemplation of the separating abyss; and this made him even more miserable.
He decided to go away; he made the decision again and again, but always remained there—restless and yearning.
As for Misha, he fell quite in love with Trirodov. He liked to remain with Elisaveta in order to talk about him.
One evening Piotr came to Trirodov’s house. He did not like to go there, for such antagonistic feelings wrestled in his soul! But common courtesy made the visit necessary.
Again a discussion was started. In Piotr’s opinion revolution was to the detriment of religion and culture. It was a tedious, unnecessary discussion. But Piotr could never resist uttering malicious words against the extremes of the “liberating movement.”
He felt awkward during the whole visit. He wished to handle something all the time and to be doing something. His restlessness tormented him in a strange way. Now he picked up one trifle from the table, now another, and put it down again. He took a prism in his hand. Trirodov trembled. He said something quietly and inaudibly. Piotr did not hear, but kept on looking in astonishment at the heavy prism in his hand; and as he turned it over and over he wondered at the reason of its weight. Trirodov trembled nervously. Piotr, in turning the prism rather awkwardly, struck it against the edge of the table. Trirodov shivered, shouted something incoherently, and, snatching the prism from Piotr’s hands, said in an agitated voice:
“Please put it down!”
Piotr looked in astonishment at Trirodov, who was visibly confused. Piotr smiled unwillingly and asked:
“Why, what is it?”
“How should I tell you!” said Trirodov. “It is connected with … Please forgive my sharpness. I thought you were going to drop it, and I wanted to. … It seems like a whim. … Of course it is really nothing … but it is connected with an old episode in my life. Really, I don’t know why I keep these ugly things on my table. But there are such intimate memories … you understand. … Still, I’m so very sorry. …”
Piotr listened in perplexity. Suddenly he realized that it was rude
