an, and happy is he to whom Heaven has
given a bit of bread, and who need not be indebted to any one!" What Don
Quixote felt then, I feel now.... God grant, my dear Bassistoff, that
you too may some day experience this feeling!'

Bassistoff pressed Rudin's hand, and the honest boy's heart beat
violently with emotion. Till they reached the station Rudin spoke of
the dignity of man, of the meaning of true independence. He spoke nobly,
fervently, and justly, and when the moment of separation had come,
Bassistoff could not refrain from throwing himself on his neck and
sobbing. Rudin himself shed tears too, but he was not weeping because he
was parting from Bassistoff. His tears were the tears of wounded vanity.

Natalya had gone to her own room, and there she read Rudin's letter.

'Dear Natalya Alexyevna,' he wrote her, 'I have decided to depart. There
is no other course open to me. I have decided to leave before I am told
plainly to go. By my departure all difficulties will be put an end to,
and there will be scarcely any one who will regret me. What else did I
expect?... It is always so, but why am I writing to you?

'I am parting from you probably for ever, and it would be too painful to
me to leave you with a worse recollection of me than I deserve. This is
why I am writing to you. I do not want either to justify myself or to
blame any one whatever except myself; I want, as far as possible, to
explain myself.... The events of the last days have been so unexpected,
so sudden....

'Our interview to-day will be a memorable lesson to me. Yes, you are
right; I did not know you, and I thought I knew you! In the course of my
life I have had to do with people of all kinds. I have known many women
and young girls, but in you I met for the first time an absolutely true
and upright soul. This was something I was not used to, and I did not
know how to appreciate you fittingly. I felt an attraction to you from
the first day of our acquaintance; you may have observed it. I spent
with you hour after hour without learning to know you; I scarcely even
tried to know you--and I could imagine that I loved you! For this sin I
am punished now.

'Once before I loved a woman, and she loved me. My feeling for her was
complex, like hers for me; but, as she was not simple herself, it was
all the better for her. Truth was not told to me then, and now I did not
recognise it when it was offered me.... I have recognised it at last,
when it is t