'But I know that when you go away I shall be worried by the question of your reality. You are a phantom, an hallucination. So I am mentally deranged, not normal?'
'What if you are? Why trouble yourself? You are ill because you have overworked and exhausted yourself, and that means that you have sacrificed your health to the idea, and the time is near at hand when you will give up life itself to it. What could be better? That is the goal towards which all divinely endowed, noble natures strive.'
'If I know I am mentally affected, can I trust myself?'
'And are you sure that the men of genius, whom all men trust, did not see phantoms, too? The learned say now that genius is allied to madness. My friend, healthy and normal people are only the common herd. Reflections upon the neurasthenia of the age, nervous exhaustion and degeneracy, et cetera, can only seriously agitate those who place the object of life in the present -- that is, the common herd.'
'The Romans used to say:
'Not everything the Greeks and the Romans said is true. Exaltation, enthusiasm, ecstasy -- all that distinguishes prophets, poets, martyrs for the idea, from the common folk -- is repellent to the animal side of man -- that is, his physical health. I repeat, if you want to be healthy and normal, go to the common herd.'
'Strange that you repeat what often comes into my mind,' said Kovrin. 'It is as though you had seen and overheard my secret thoughts. But don't let us talk about me. What do you mean by 'eternal truth'?'
The monk did not answer. Kovrin looked at him and could not distinguish his face. His features grew blurred and misty. Then the monk's head and arms disappeared; his body seemed merged into the seat and the evening twilight, and he vanished altogether.
'The hallucination is over,' said Kovrin; and he laughed. 'It's a pity.'
He went back to the house, light-hearted and happy. The little the monk had said to him had flattered, not his vanity, but his whole soul, his whole being. To be one of the chosen, to serve eternal truth, to stand in the ranks of those who could make mankind worthy of the kingdom of God some thousands of years sooner -- that is, to free men from some thousands of years of unnecessary struggle, sin, and suffering; to sacrifice to the idea everything -- youth, strength, health; to be ready to die for the common weal -- what an exalted, what a happy lot! He recalled his past -- pure, chaste, laborious; he remembered what he had learned himself and what he had taught to others, and decided that there was no exaggeration in the monk's words.
Tanya came to meet him in the park: she was by now wearing a different dress.
'Are you here?' she said. 'And we have been looking and looking for you. . . . But what is the matter with you?' she asked in wonder, glancing at his radiant, ecstatic face and eyes full of tears. 'How strange you are, Andryusha!'
'I am pleased, Tanya,' said Kovrin, laying his hand on her shoulders. 'I am more than pleased: I am happy. Tanya, darling Tanya, you are an extraordinary, nice creature. Dear Tanya, I am so glad, I am so glad!'
He kissed both her hands ardently, and went on:
'I have just passed through an exalted, wonderful, unearthly moment. But I can't tell you all about it or you would call me mad and not believe me. Let us talk of you. Dear, delightful Tanya! I love you, and am used to loving you. To have you near me, to meet you a dozen times a day, has become a necessity of my existence; I don't know how I shall get on without you when I go back home.'
'Oh,' laughed Tanya, 'you will forget about us in two days. We are humble people and you are a great man.'
'No; let us talk in earnest!' he said. 'I shall take you with me, Tanya. Yes? Will you come with me? Will you be mine?'
'Come,' said Tanya, and tried to laugh again, but the laugh would not come, and patches of colour came into her face.
She began breathing quickly and walked very quickly, but not to the house, but further into the park.
'I was not thinking of it . . . I was not thinking of it,' she said, wringing her hands in despair.
And Kovrin followed her and went on talking, with the same radiant, enthusiastic face:
'I want a love that will dominate me altogether; and that love only you, Tanya, can give me. I am happy! I am happy!'
She was overwhelmed, and huddling and shrinking together, seemed ten years older all at once, while he thought her beautiful and expressed his rapture aloud:
'How lovely she is!'
VI
Learning from Kovrin that not only a romance had been got up, but that there would even be a wedding, Yegor Semyonitch spent a long time in pacing from one corner of the room to the other, trying to conceal his agitation. His hands began trembling, his neck swelled and turned purple, he ordered his racing droshky and drove off somewhere. Tanya, seeing how he lashed the horse, and seeing how he pulled his cap over his ears, understood what he was feeling, shut herself up in her room, and cried the whole day.
In the hot-houses the peaches and plums were already ripe; the packing and sending off of these tender and fragile goods to Moscow took a great deal of care, work, and trouble. Owing to the fact that the summer was very hot and dry, it was necessary to water every tree, and a great deal of time and labour was spent on doing it. Numbers of caterpillars made their appearance, which, to Kovrin's disgust, the labourers and even Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya squashed with their fingers. In spite of all that, they had already to book autumn orders for fruit and trees, and to carry on a great deal of correspondence. And at the very busiest time, when no one seemed to have a free moment, the work of the fields carried off more than half their labourers from the garden. Yegor Semyonitch, sunburnt, exhausted, ill-humoured, galloped from the fields to the garden and back again; cried that he was being torn to pieces, and that he should put a bullet through his brains.
Then came the fuss and worry of the trousseau, to which the Pesotskys attached a good deal of importance. Every one's head was in a whirl from the snipping of the scissors, the rattle of the sewing-machine, the smell of hot irons, and the caprices of the dressmaker, a huffy and nervous lady. And, as ill-luck would have it, visitors came every day, who had to be entertained, fed, and even put up for the night. But all this hard labour passed unnoticed as though in a fog. Tanya felt that love and happiness had taken her unawares, though she had, since she was fourteen, for some reason been convinced that Kovrin would marry her and no one else. She was bewildered, could
