never forget it.' It was then I found out, then I realised the meaning
of the word I had chosen for myself long before: resignation. But still
she has remained my constant dream, my ideal.... And he's to be pitied
who lives without an ideal!'

I looked at Pasinkov; his eyes, fastened, as it were, on the distance,
shone with feverish brilliance.

'I loved her,' he went on, 'I loved her, her, calm, true,
unapproachable, incorruptible; when she went away, I was almost mad
with grief.... Since then I have never cared for any one.'...

And suddenly turning, he pressed his face into the pillow, and began
quietly weeping.

I jumped up, bent over him, and began trying to comfort him....

'It's no matter,' he said, raising his head and shaking back his hair;
'it's nothing; I felt a little bitter, a little sorry ... for myself,
that is.... But it's all no matter. It's all the fault of those verses.
Read me something else, more cheerful.'

I took up Lermontov and began hurriedly turning over the pages; but, as
fate would have it, I kept coming across poems likely to agitate
Pasinkov again. At last I read him 'The Gifts of Terek.'

'Jingling rhetoric!' said my poor friend, with the tone of a preceptor;
'but there are fine passages. Since I saw you, brother, I've tried my
hand at poetry, and began one poem--"The Cup of Life"--but it didn't
come off! It's for us, brother, to appreciate, not to create.... But