from his pocket, he asked:

"Do you permit, father?" Then, handing the cigarette-case, with
great politeness, to Darvid, he added:

"But, perhaps, you will smoke also?"

Darvid, with thick wrinkles between his brows, shook his head and
sat down.

"Why did you leave the university soon after I went away?" asked
he. "I inquired of you touching this several times by letter, but
you have never given me a definite answer."

"I beg pardon for that, father, but I am wonderfully slow in
writing letters. I will explain all to you willingly in words--"

Darvid interrupted:

"I have no time for long talk, so tell me at once. Have you no
love for science?"

Maryan let out a streak of smoke from his lips, and spoke with
deliberation:

"I feel no repugnance whatever toward science. I read much, and
mental curiosity is just one of the most emphatic traits of my
individuality. In childhood I swallowed books in monumental
numbers, but I have never learned school lessons. All were
astonished at this, and still the thing is simple, it lies quite
on the surface. Common individualities yield to rules, but
energetic and higher ones will not endure them. Rules and duty
are stables in which humanity confines its beasts, to prevent
them from injuring fields under culture. Cattle and sheep stand
patiently in the enclosures, higher organisms break them down and
go out into freedom. I need absolute freedom in all things;
and,-therefore, I stopped going to inns of science, which give
out this science at stated hours, in certain sorts and doses.
Though, even in this regard, I showed many good intentions, owing
to the entreaties and persuasions of mamma. From legal studies I
betook myself to the study of nature, and turned from that to
philosophy, thinking that something would occupy me, and that I
should be able to still that real storm of desperation which
seized poor mamma. But I was not able. The professors were
contemptible, my fellow-students a rabble. Society relations
amused me in those days, and occupied me: imagination swept me
farther and higher. So I stopped a labor which was annoying and
irritating, and which, moreover, had no object."

He quenched his cigarette stump in the ash-pan, and, sinking
again into the deep armchair, continued:

"So far as I have been able to observe, people study science
regularly for one of two purposes: either they intend to devote
themselves to what is called the salvation of mankind, or the