'No, never.'

'Why did he go to Sophia?'

'His father used to live there.'

Elena grew thoughtful.

'To liberate one's country!' she said. 'It is terrible even to
utter those words, they are so grand.'

At that instant Anna Vassilyevna came into the room, and the
conversation stopped.

Bersenyev was stirred by strange emotions when he returned home that
evening. He did not regret his plan of making Elena acquainted with
Insarov, he felt the deep impression made on her by his account of the
young Bulgarian very natural . . . had he not himself tried to deepen
that impression! But a vague, unfathomable emotion lurked secretly in
his heart; he was sad with a sadness that had nothing noble in it.
This sadness did not prevent him, however, from setting to work on the
_History of the Hohenstaufen_, and beginning to read it at the very page
at which he had left off the evening before.




XI