see I do not spare myself; no, thank God! it's high time!

But from the bell-tower of the monastery near it struck five o'clock;
the evening was coming on rapidly. Varia got up hastily, thrust a
little note into my hand, and went off towards the house. I overtook
her, promised to bring Andrei to her, and stealthily, like a happy
lover, crept out by the little gate into the field. On the note was
written in an unsteady hand the words: To Andrei Nikolaevitch.

Next day I set off early in the morning to Kolosov's. I'm bound to
confess that, although I assured myself that my intentions were not
only honourable, but positively brimful of great-hearted
self-sacrifice, I was yet conscious of a certain awkwardness, even
timidity. I arrived at Kolosov's. There was with him a fellow called
Puzyritsin, a former student who had never taken his degree, one of
those authors of sensational novels of the so-called 'Moscow' or 'grey'
school. Puzyritsin was a very good-natured and shy person, and was
always preparing to be an hussar, in spite of his thirty-three years.
He belonged to that class of people who feel it absolutely necessary,
once in the twenty-four hours, to utter a phrase after the pattern of,
'The beautiful always falls into decay in the flower of its splendour;
such is the fate of the beautiful in the world,' in order to smoke his
pipe with redoubled zest all the rest of the day in a circle of 'good
comrades.' On this account he was called an idealist. Well, so
Puzyritsin was sitting with Kolosov reading him some 'fragment.' I
began to listen; it was all about a youth, who loves a maiden, kills
her, and so on. At last Puzyritsin finished and retreated. His absurd
production, solemnly bawling voice, his presence altogether, had put
Kolosov into a mood of sarcastic irritability. I felt that I had come
at an unlucky moment, but there was nothing to be done for it; without