of sincerity."

"Yes, I always confess the things of which I am most ashamed--but only
to people in whom I trust," I said.

"Ah, but to trust a man you must be his friend completely, and we
are not friends yet, Nicolas. Remember how, when we were speaking of
friendship, we agreed that, to be real friends, we ought to trust one
another implicitly."

"I trust you in so far as that I feel convinced that you would never
repeat a word of what I might tell you," I said.

"Yet perhaps the most interesting and important thoughts of all are
just those which we never tell one another, while the mean thoughts
(the thoughts which, if we only knew that we had to confess them to
one another, would probably never have the hardihood to enter our
minds)--Well, do you know what I am thinking of, Nicolas?" he broke off,
rising and taking my hand with a smile. "I propose (and I feel sure
that it would benefit us mutually) that we should pledge our word to one
another to tell each other EVERYTHING. We should then really know each
other, and never have anything on our consciences. And, to guard against
outsiders, let us also agree never to speak of one another to a third
person. Suppose we do that?"

"I agree," I replied. And we did it. What the result was shall be told
hereafter.

Kerr has said that every attachment has two sides: one loves, and the
other allows himself to be loved; one kisses, and the other surrenders
his cheek. That is perfectly true. In the case of our own attachment it
was I who kissed, and Dimitri who surrendered his cheek--though he, in
his turn, was ready to pay me a similar salute. We loved equally because
we knew and appreciated each other thoroughly, but this did not prevent
him from exercising an influence over me, nor myself from rendering him
adoration.

It will readily be understood that Nechludoff's influence caused me
to adopt his bent of mind, the essence of which lay in an enthusiastic
reverence for ideal virtue and a firm belief in man's vocation to
perpetual perfection. To raise mankind, to abolish vice and misery,
seemed at that time a task offering no difficulties. To educate oneself
to every virtue, and so to achieve happiness, seemed a simple and easy
matter.

Only God Himself knows whether those blessed dreams of youth were
ridiculous, or whose the fault was that they never became realised.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Boyhood, by Leo Tolstoy

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