have to separate SOME day. You are rich--you have
Petrovskoe, while we are poor--Mamma has nothing."

"You are rich," "we are poor"--both the words and the ideas which they
connoted seemed to me extremely strange. Hitherto, I had conceived that
only beggars and peasants were poor and could not reconcile in my mind
the idea of poverty and the graceful, charming Katenka. I felt that Mimi
and her daughter ought to live with us ALWAYS and to share everything
that we possessed. Things ought never to be otherwise. Yet, at this
moment, a thousand new thoughts with regard to their lonely position
came crowding into my head, and I felt so remorseful at the notion
that we were rich and they poor, that I coloured up and could not look
Katenka in the face.

"Yet what does it matter," I thought, "that we are well off and they are
not? Why should that necessitate a separation? Why should we not share
in common what we possess?" Yet, I had a feeling that I could not talk
to Katenka on the subject, since a certain practical instinct, opposed
to all logical reasoning, warned me that, right though she possibly was,
I should do wrong to tell her so.

"It is impossible that you should leave us. How could we ever live
apart?"

"Yet what else is there to be done? Certainly I do not WANT to do it;
yet, if it HAS to be done, I know what my plan in life will be."

"Yes, to become an actress! How absurd!" I exclaimed (for I knew that to
enter that profession had always been her favourite dream).

"Oh no. I only used to say that when I was a little girl."

"Well, then? What?"

"To go into a convent and live there. Then I could walk out in a black
dress and velvet cap!" cried Katenka.

Has it ever befallen you, my readers, to become suddenly aware that your
conception of things has altered--as though every object in life
had unexpectedly turned a side towards you of which you had hitherto
remained unaware? Such a species of moral change occurred, as regards
myself, during this journey, and therefore from it I date the beginning
of my boyhood. For the first time in my life, I then envisaged the idea
that we--i.e. our family--were not the only persons in the world; that
not every conceivable interest was centred in ourselves; and that there
existed numbers of people who had nothing in common with us, cared
nothing for us, and even knew nothing of our existence. No doubt I had
known all this before--only I had not known it then as I knew i