price, nay, every vice, of the
being beloved. People who love thus always love their life long, since,
the more they love, the more they get to know the object beloved,
and the easier they find the task of loving it--that is to say, of
satisfying its desires. Their love seldom finds expression in words, but
if it does so, it expresses itself neither with assurance nor beauty,
but rather in a shamefaced, awkward manner, since people of this kind
invariably have misgivings that they are loving unworthily. People of
this kind love even the faults of their adored one, for the reason that
those faults afford them the power of constantly satisfying new
desires. They look for their affection to be returned, and even
deceive themselves into believing that it is returned, and are happy
accordingly: yet in the reverse case they will still continue to
desire happiness for their beloved one, and try by every means in their
power--whether moral or material, great or small--to provide it.

Such practical love it was--love for her nephew, for her niece, for
her sister, for Lubov Sergievna, and even for myself, because I loved
Dimitri--that shone in the eyes, as well as in the every word and
movement, of Sophia Ivanovna.

Only long afterwards did I learn to value her at her true worth. Yet
even now the question occurred to me: "What has made Dimitri--who
throughout has tried to understand love differently to other young
fellows, and has always had before his eyes the gentle, loving Sophia
Ivanovna--suddenly fall so deeply in love with the incomprehensible
Lubov Sergievna, and declare that in his aunt he can only find good
QUALITIES? Verily it is a true saying that 'a prophet hath no honour in
his own country.' One of two things: either every man has in him more
of bad than of good, or every man is more receptive to bad than to good.
Lubov Sergievna he has not known for long, whereas his aunt's love he
has known since the day of his birth."

XXV. I BECOME BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH THE NECHLUDOFFS

WHEN I returned to the verandah, I found that they were not talking
of me at all, as I had anticipated. On the contrary, Varenika had laid
aside the book, and was engaged in a heated dispute with Dimitri, who,
for his part, was walking up and down the verandah, and frowningly
adjusting his neck in his collar as he did so. The subject of the
quarrel seemed to be Ivan Yakovlevitch and superstition, but it was too
animated a difference for