t know by
whom or how, but I feel as if I were being tortured, and inwardly I
am shrieking in revolt; I weep and can't be quiet.... O my God, subdue
these outbreaks in me! Thou alone canst aid me, all else is useless; my
miserable alms-giving, my studies can do nothing, nothing, nothing to
help me. I should like to go out as a servant somewhere, really; that
would do me good.

'What is my youth for, what am I living for, why have I a soul, what is
it all for?

'... Insarov, Mr. Insarov--upon my word I don't know how to write--still
interests me, I should like to know what he has within, in his soul? He
seems so open, so easy to talk to, but I can see nothing. Sometimes he
looks at me with such searching eyes--or is that my fancy? Paul keeps
teasing me. I am angry with Paul. What does he want? He's in love with
me... but his love's no good to me. He's in love with Zoya too. I'm
unjust to him; he told me yesterday I didn't know how to be unjust by
halves... that's true. It's very horrid.

'Ah, I feel one needs unhappiness, or poverty or sickness, or else one
gets conceited directly.

'... What made Andrei Petrovitch tell me to-day about those two
Bulgarians! He told me it as it were with some intention. What have I to
do with Mr. Insarov? I feel cross with Andrei Petrovitch.

'... I take my pen and don't know how to begin. How unexpectedly he
began to talk to me in the garden to-day! How friendly and confiding
he was! How quickly it happened! As if we were old, old friends and had
only just recognised each other. How could I have not understood him
before? How near he is to me now! And--what's so wonderful--I feel ever
so much calmer now. It's ludicrous; yesterday I was angry with Andrei
Petrovitch, and angry with him, I even called him _Mr. Insarov_, and
to-day... Here at last is a true man; some one one may depend upon. He
won't tell lies; he's the first man I have met who never tells lies; all
the others tell lies, everything's lying. Andrei Petrovitch, dear good
friend, why do I wrong you? No! Andrei Petrovitch is more learned than
he is, even, perhaps more intellectual. But I don't know, he seems so
small beside him. When he speaks of his country he seems taller, and his
face grows handsome, and his voice is like steel, and... no... it seems
as though there were no one in the world before whom he would flinch.
And he doesn't only talk.... he has acted and he will act I shall ask
him.... How suddenly he turned t