nsarov to eat a cutlet, and that he would
probably soon go out; she seemed absorbed, dropped her eyes.

'Guess, what I want to say to you,' she said. Bersenyev was confused. He
understood her.

'I suppose,' he answered, looking away, 'you want to say that you wish
to see him.'

Elena crimsoned, and scarcely audibly, she breathed, 'Yes.'

'Well, what then? That, I imagine, you can easily do.'--'Ugh!' he
thought, 'what a loath-some feeling there is in my heart!'

'You mean that I have already before...' said Elena. 'But I am
afraid--now he is, you say, seldom alone.'

'That's not difficult to get over,' replied Bersenyev, still not looking
at her. 'I, of course, cannot prepare him; but give me a note. Who
can hinder your writing to him as a good friend, in whom you take an
interest? There's no harm in that. Appoint--I mean, write to him when
you will come.

'I am ashamed,' whispered Elena.

'Give me the note, I will take it.'

'There's no need of that, but I wanted to ask you--don't be angry with
me, Andrei Petrovitch--don't go to him to-morrow!'

Bersenyev bit his lip.

'Ah! yes, I understand; very well, very well,' and, adding two or three
words more, he quickly took leave.

'So much the better, so much the better,' he thought, as he hurried
home. 'I have learnt nothing new, but so much the better. What possessed
me to go hanging on to the edge of another man's happiness? I regret
nothing; I have done what my conscience told me; but now it is over. Let
them be! My father was right when he used to say to me: "You and I,
my dear boy, are not Sybarites, we are not aristocrats, we're not the
spoilt darlings of fortune and nature, we are not even martyrs--we are
workmen and nothing more. Put on your leather apron, workman, and take
your place at your workman's bench, in your dark workshop, and let the
sun shine on other men! Even our dull life has its own pride, its own
happiness!"'

The next morning Insarov got a brief note by the post. 'Expect me,'
Elena wrote to him, 'and give orders for no one to see you. A. P. will
not come.'

XXVIII

Insarov read Elena's note, and at once began to set his room to rights;
asked his landlady to take away the medicine-glasses, took off his
dressing-gown and put on his coat. His head was swimming and his heart
throbbing from weakness and delight. His knees were shaking; he dropped
on to the sofa, and began to look at his watch. 'It's now a quarter to
twelve,'