will you live on when you have spent your father's money?"

"Then we shall see," she answers.

"That money, my dear, deserves to be treated more seriously. It was
earned by a good man, by honest labour."

"You have told me that already. I know it."

At first we drive through the open country, then through the pine-wood
which is visible from my window. Nature seems to me as beautiful as it
always has been, though some evil spirit whispers to me that these pines
and fir trees, birds, and white clouds on the sky, will not notice my
absence when in three or four months I am dead. Katya loves driving, and
she is pleased that it is fine weather and that I am sitting beside her.
She is in good spirits and does not say harsh things.

"You are a very good man, Nikolay Stepanovitch," she says. "You are a
rare specimen, and there isn't an actor who would understand how to play
you. Me or Mihail Fyodorovitch, for instance, any poor actor could do,
but not you. And I envy you, I envy you horribly! Do you know what I
stand for? What?"

She ponders for a minute, and then asks me:

"Nikolay Stepanovitch, I am a negative phenomenon! Yes?"

"Yes," I answer.

"H'm! what am I to do?"

What answer was I to make her? It is easy to say "work," or "give your
possessions to the poor," or "know yourself," and because it is so easy
to say that, I don't know what to answer.

My colleagues when they teach therapeutics advise "the individual study
of each separate case." One has but to obey this advice to gain the
conviction that the methods recommended in the textbooks as the best and
as providing a safe basis for treatment turn out to be quite unsuitable
in individual cases. It is just the same in moral ailments.

But I must make some answer, and I say:

"You have too much free time, my dear; you absolutely must take up some
occupation. After all, why shouldn't you be an actress again if it is
your vocation?"

"I cannot!"

"Your tone and manner suggest that you are a victim. I don't like that,
my dear; it is your own fault. Remember, you began with falling out with
people and methods, but you have done nothing to make either better. You
did not struggle with evil, but were cast down by it, and you are not
the victim of the struggle, but of your own impotence. Well, of course
you were young and inexperienced then; now it may all be different. Yes,
really, go on the stage. You will work, you will serve a sacred art."

"Don't pret