"All the same, it will have to
be altered afterwards."

The conversation turned to political channels again. The mysterious
inner pain again began gnawing at Nejdanov's heart, but the keener the
pain, the more positively and loudly he spoke. He had drunk only
one glass of beer, but it seemed to him at times that he was quite
intoxicated. His head swam around and his heart beat feverishly.

When the discussion came to an end at last at about four o'clock in the
morning, and they all passed by the servant asleep in the anteroom on
their way to their own rooms, Nejdanov, before retiring to bed, stood
for a long time motionless, gazing straight before him. He was filled
with wonder at the proud, heart-rending note in all that Markelov had
said. The man's vanity must have been hurt, he must have suffered, but
how nobly he forgot his own personal sorrows for that which he held to
be the truth. "He is a limited soul," Nejdanov thought, "but is it not a
thousand times better to be like that than such... such as I feel myself
to be?"

He immediately became indignant at his own self-depreciation.

"What made me think that? Am I not also capable of self-sacrifice? Just
wait, gentlemen, and you too, Paklin. I will show you all that although
I am aesthetic and write verses--"

He pushed back his hair with an angry gesture, ground his teeth,
undressed hurriedly, and jumped into the cold, damp bed.

"Goodnight, I am your neighbour," Mashurina's voice was heard from the
other side of the door.

"Goodnight," Nejdanov responded, and remembered suddenly that during the
whole evening she had not taken her eyes off him.

"What does she want?" he muttered to himself, and instantly felt
ashamed. "If only I could get to sleep!"

But it was difficult for him to calm his overwrought nerves, and the sun
was already high when at last he fell into a heavy, troubled sleep.

In the morning he got up late with a bad headache. He dressed, went up
to the window of his attic, and looked out upon Markelov's farm. It
was practically a mere nothing; the tiny little house was situated in a
hollow by the side of a wood. A small barn, the stables, cellar, and
a little hut with a half-bare thatched roof, stood on one side; on the
other a small pond, a strip of kitchen garden, a hemp field, another hut
with a roof like the first one; in the distance yet another barn, a tiny
shed, and an empty thrashing floor--this was all the "wealth" that met
the ey