rs have been broken; there is nothing to hinder
me now! It doesn't matter that Golushkin is an ass, and as for
Kisliakov's letters, they may perhaps be absurd, but we must consider
the most important thing. Kisliakov says that everything is ready.
Perhaps you don't believe that too."

Nejdanov did not reply.

"You may be right, but if we've to wait until everything, absolutely
everything, is ready, we shall never make a beginning. If we weigh all
the consequences beforehand we're sure to find some bad ones among them.
For instance, when our forefathers emancipated the serfs, do you think
they could foresee that a whole class of money-lending landlords would
spring up as a result of the emancipation? Landlords who sell a peasant
eight bushels of rotten rye for six roubles and in return for it get
labour for the whole six roubles, then the same quantity of good
sound rye and interest on top of that! Which means that they drain the
peasants to the last drop of blood! You'll agree that our emancipators
could hardly have foreseen that. Even if they had foreseen it, they
would still have been quite right in freeing the serfs without weighing
all the consequences beforehand! That is why I have decided!"

Nejdanov looked at Markelov with amazement, but the latter turned to one
side and directed his gaze into a corner of the room. He sat with his
eyes closed, biting his lips and chewing his moustache.

"Yes, I've decided!" he repeated, striking his knee with his brown hairy
hand. "I'm very obstinate... It's not for nothing that I'm half a Little
Russian."

He got up, dragged himself into his bedroom, and came back with a small
portrait of Mariana in a glazed frame.

"Take this," he said in a sad, though steady voice. "I drew it some time
ago. I don't draw well, but I think it's like her." (It was a pencil
sketch in profile and was certainly like Mariana.) "Take it, Alexai;
it is my bequest, and with this portrait I give you all my rights....
I know I never had any... but you know what I mean! I give you up
everything, and her.... She is very good, Alexai--"

Markelov ceased; his chest heaved visibly.

"Take it. You are not angry with me, are you? Well, take it then. It's
no use to me... now."

Nejdanov took the portrait, but a strange sensation oppressed his
heart. It seemed to him that he had no right to take this gift; that
if Markelov knew what was in his, Nejdanov's, heart, he would not have
given it him. He stood