'Never loved! ... Yes, quite true, I never have! But after all, I
have within me a desire to love, and nothing could be stronger
than that desire! But then, again, does such love exist? There
always remains something incomplete. Ah well! What's the use of
talking? I've made an awful mess of life! But anyhow it's all over
now; you are quite right. And I feel that I am beginning a new
life.'

'Which you will again make a mess of,' said the man who lay on the
sofa playing with his watch-key. But the traveller did not listen
to him.

'I am sad and yet glad to go,' he continued. 'Why I am sad I don't
know.'

And the traveller went on talking about himself, without noticing
that this did not interest the others as much as it did him. A man
is never such an egotist as at moments of spiritual ecstasy. At
such times it seems to him that there is nothing on earth more
splendid and interesting than himself.

'Dmitri Andreich! The coachman won't wait any longer!' said a
young serf, entering the room in a sheepskin coat, with a scarf
tied round his head. 'The horses have been standing since twelve,
and it's now four o'clock!'

Dmitri Andreich looked at his serf, Vanyusha. The scarf round
Vanyusha's head, his felt boots and sleepy face, seemed to be
calling his master to a new life of labour, hardship, and