both imagine that in living together openly you are
doing something exceptionally honourable and advanced, but I can't
agree with that . . . what shall I call it? . . . romantic attitude?"

Orlov made no reply. He was out of humour and disinclined to talk.
Pekarsky, still perplexed, drummed on the table with his fingers,
thought a little, and said:

"I don't understand you, all the same. You are not a student and
she is not a dressmaker. You are both of you people with means. I
should have thought you might have arranged a separate flat for
her."

"No, I couldn't. Read Turgenev."

"Why should I read him? I have read him already."

"Turgenev teaches us in his novels that every exalted, noble-minded
girl should follow the man she loves to the ends of the earth, and
should serve his idea," said Orlov, screwing up his eyes ironically.
"The ends of the earth are poetic license; the earth and all its
ends can be reduced to the flat of the man she loves. . . . And so
not to live in the same flat with the woman who loves you is to
deny her her exalted vocation and to refuse to share her ideals.
Yes, my dear fellow, Turgenev wrote, and I have to suffer for it."

"What Turgenev has got to do with it I don't understand," said
Gruzin softly, and he shrugged his shoulders. "Do you remember,
_George_, how in 'Three Meetings' he is walking late in the evening
somewhere in Italy, and suddenly hears, _'Vieni pensando a me
segretamente,'_" Gruzin hummed. "It's fine."

"But she hasn't come to settle with you by force," said Pekarsky.
"It was your own wish."

"What next! Far from wishing it, I never imagined that this would
ever happen. When she said she was coming to live with me, I thought
it was a charming joke on her part."

Everybody laughed.

"I couldn't have wished for such a thing," said Orlov in the tone
of a man compelled to justify himself. "I am not a Turgenev hero,
and if I ever wanted to free Bulgaria I shouldn't need a lady's
company. I look upon love primarily as a necessity of my physical
nature, degrading and antagonistic to my spirit; it must either be
satisfied with discretion or renounced altogether, otherwise it
will bring into one's life elements as unclean as itself. For it
to be an enjoyment and not a torment, I will try to make it beautiful
and to surround it with a mass of illusions. I should never go and
see a woman unless I were sure beforehand that she would be beautiful
and fascinating; and I s