esn't know who
they are. You don't know grammar!"

"It's in the spirit of the language," Shatov muttered.

"Oh, get along with your spirit, you bore me. Why shouldn't the local
inhabitant or reader have his books bound?"

"Because reading books and having them bound are two different stages of
development, and there's a vast gulf between them. To begin with, a man
gradually gets used to reading, in the course of ages of course, but
takes no care of his books and throws them about, not thinking them
worth attention. But binding implies respect for books, and implies
that not only he has grown fond of reading, but that he looks upon it as
something of value. That period has not been reached anywhere in Russia
yet. In Europe books have been bound for a long while."

"Though that's pedantic, anyway, it's not stupid, and reminds me of the
time three years ago; you used to be rather clever sometimes three years
ago."

She said this as disdainfully as her other capricious remarks.

"Marie, Marie," said Shatov, turning to her, much moved, "oh, Marie!
If you only knew how much has happened in those three years! I heard
afterwards that you despised me for changing my convictions. But what
are the men I've broken with? The enemies of all true life, out-of-date
Liberals who are afraid of their own independence, the flunkeys
of thought, the enemies of individuality and freedom, the decrepit
advocates of deadness and rottenness! All they have to offer is
senility, a glorious mediocrity of the most bourgeois kind, contemptible
shallowness, a jealous equality, equality without individual dignity,
equality as it's understood by flunkeys or by the French in '93. And
the worst of it is there are swarms of scoundrels among them, swarms of
scoundrels!"

"Yes, there are a lot of scoundrels," she brought out abruptly with
painful effort. She lay stretched out, motionless, as though afraid
to move, with her head thrown back on the pillow, rather on one side,
staring at the ceiling with exhausted but glowing eyes. Her face was
pale, her lips were dry and hot.

"You recognise it, Marie, you recognise it," cried Shatov. She tried to
shake her head, and suddenly the same spasm came over her again. Again
she hid her face in the pillow, and again for a full minute she squeezed
Shatov's hand till it hurt. He had run up, beside himself with alarm.

"Marie, Marie! But it may be very serious, Marie!"

"Be quiet... I won't have it, I won't ha