I will not keep you long in suspense, gentlemen; I am afraid of
exhausting your patience....We never met again. I never went back to
Ivan Semyonitch's. The first days, it is true, of my voluntary
separation from Varia did not pass without tears, self-reproach, and
emotion; I was frightened myself at the rapid drooping of my love;
twenty times over I was on the point of starting off to see her.
Vividly I pictured to myself her amazement, her grief, her wounded
feelings; but--I never went to Ivan Semyonitch's again. In her absence
I begged her forgiveness, fell on my knees before her, assured her of
my profound repentance--and once, when I met a girl in the street
slightly resembling her, I took to my heels without looking back, and
only breathed freely in a cook-shop after the fifth jam-puff. The word
'to-morrow' was invented for irresolute people, and for children; like
a baby, I lulled myself with that magic word. 'To-morrow I will go to
her, whatever happens,' I said to myself, and ate and slept well
to-day. I began to think a great deal more about Kolosov than about
Varia ... everywhere, continually, I saw his open, bold, careless face.
I began going to see him as before. He gave me the same welcome as
ever. But how deeply I felt his superiority to me! How ridiculous I
thought all my fancies, my pensive melancholy, during the period of
Kolosov's connection with Varia, my magnanimous resolution to bring
them together again, my anticipations, my raptures, my remorse!... I
had played a wretched, drawn-out part of screaming farce, but he had
passed so simply, so well, through it all....

You will say, 'What is there wonderful in that? your Kolosov fell in
love with a girl, then fell out of love again, and threw her over....
Why, that happens with everybody....' Agreed; but which of us knows
just when to break with our past? Which of us, tell me, is not afraid