-echoing your hymn, because then you would have given her--dumb
nature--speech!'

Shubin leaped on to his feet and walked twice up and down, but Bersenyev
bent his head, and his face was overcast by a faint flush.

'I don't altogether agree with you,' he began: 'nature does not always
urge us... towards love.' (He could not at once pronounce the word.)
'Nature threatens us, too; she reminds us of dreadful... yes, insoluble
mysteries. Is she not destined to swallow us up, is she not swallowing
us up unceasingly? She holds life and death as well; and death speaks in
her as loudly as life.'

'In love, too, there is both life and death,' interposed Shubin.

'And then,' Bersenyev went on: 'when I, for example, stand in the spring
in the forest, in a green glade, when I can fancy the romantic notes of
Oberon's fairy horn' (Bersenyev was a little ashamed when he had spoken
these words)--'is that, too----'

'The thirst for love, the thirst for happiness, nothing more!' broke
in Shubin. 'I, too, know those notes, I know the languor and the
expectation which come upon the soul in the forest's shade, in its deep
recesses, or at evening in the open fields when the sun sets and the
river mist rises behind the bushes. But forest, and river, and fields,
and sky, every cloud and every blade of grass sets me expecting, hoping
for happiness, I feel the approach, I hear the voice of happiness
calling in everything. "God of my worship, bright and gay!" That was how
I tried to begin my sole poem; you must own it's a splendid first line,
but I could never produce a second. Happiness! happiness! as long as
life is not over, as long as we have the use of all our limbs, as long
as we are going up, not down, hill! Damn it all!' pursued Shubin with
sudden vehemence, 'we are young, and neither fools nor monsters; we will
conquer happiness for ourselves!'

He shook his curls, and turned a confident almost challenging glance
upwards to the sky. Bersenyev raised his eyes and looked at him.

'Is there nothing higher than happiness?' he commented softly.

'And what, for instance?' asked Shubin, stopping short.

'Why, for instance, you and I are, as you say, young; we are good men,
let us suppose; each of us desires happiness for himself.... But is that
word, happiness, one that could unite us, set us both on fire, and make
us clasp each other's hands? Isn't that word an egoistic one; I mean,
isn't it a source of disunion?'

'Do you know word