predominance of reason over the heart is simply overwhelming amongst
us. Direct feeling, inspiration--everything is choked by petty
analysis. Where there is reasonableness there is coldness, and cold
people--it's no use to disguise it--know nothing of chastity.
That virtue is only known to those who are warm, affectionate, and
capable of love. Thirdly, our philosophy denies the significance
of each individual personality. It's easy to see that if I deny the
personality of some Natalya Stepanovna, it's absolutely nothing to
me whether she is insulted or not. To-day one insults her dignity
as a human being and pays her _Blutgeld_, and next day thinks no
more of her.

"So I sat in the summer-house and watched the young ladies. Another
woman's figure appeared in the avenue, with fair hair, her head
uncovered and a white knitted shawl on her shoulders. She walked
along the avenue, then came into the summer-house, and taking hold
of the parapet, looked indifferently below and into the distance
over the sea. As she came in she paid no attention to me, as though
she did not notice me. I scrutinised her from foot to head (not
from head to foot, as one scrutinises men) and found that she was
young, not more than five-and-twenty, nice-looking, with a good
figure, in all probability married and belonging to the class of
respectable women. She was dressed as though she were at home, but
fashionably and with taste, as ladies are, as a rule, in N.

"'This one would do nicely,' I thought, looking at her handsome
figure and her arms; 'she is all right. . . . She is probably the
wife of some doctor or schoolmaster. . . .'

"But to make up to her--that is, to make her the heroine of one