rapture. Though I am prepared to allow that any one else in my place
might have been deceived.... Who is free from vanity? I need not say
that all this was only clear to me in the course of time, when I had to
lower my clipped and at no time over-powerful wings.

The misunderstanding that had arisen between Liza and me lasted a whole
week--and there is nothing surprising in that: it has been my lot to be
a witness of misunderstandings that have lasted for years and years.
Who was it said, by the way, that truth alone is powerful? Falsehood is
just as living as truth, if not more so. To be sure, I recollect that
even during that week I felt from time to time an uneasy gnawing astir
within me ... but solitary people like me, I say again, are as
incapable of understanding what is going on within them as what is
taking place before their eyes. And, besides, is love a natural
feeling? Is it natural for man to love? Love is a sickness; and for
sickness there is no law. Granting that there was at times an
unpleasant pang in my heart; well, everything inside me was turned
upside down. And how is one to know in such circumstances, what is all
right and what is all wrong? and what is the cause, and what the
significance, of each separate symptom? But, be that as it may, all
these misconceptions, presentiments, and hopes were shattered in the
following manner.

One day--it was in the morning about twelve o'clock--I had hardly
entered Mr. Ozhogin's hall, when I heard an unfamiliar, mellow voice in
the drawing-room, the door opened, and a tall and slim man of
five-and-twenty appeared in the doorway, escorted by the master of the
house. He rapidly put on a military overcoat which lay on the slab, and
took cordial leave of Kirilla Matveitch. As he brushed past me, he
carelessly touched his foraging cap, and vanished with a clink of his