ong
while. Since then I've become more tender-hearted. Before I was as wild
and hard as a tree!"

"Why, did you not love your Pavel?"

"But that's not the same. Only a girl's feelings. And you--do you love
HIM?"

"Of course I do."

Very much?

"Ever so much."

"Really?..." Tatiana looked from one to the other, but said nothing
more.

"I'll tell you what I would like. Could you get me some coarse, strong
wool? I want to knit some stockings...plain ones."

Tatiana promised to have everything done, and clearing the table, went
out of the room with her firm, quiet step.

"Well, what shall we do now?" Mariana asked, turning to Nejdanov, and
without, waiting for a reply, continued, "Since our real work does not
begin until tomorrow, let us devote this evening to literature. Would
you like to? We can read your poems. I will be a severe critic, I
promise you."

It took Nejdanov a long time before he consented, but he gave in at last
and began reading aloud out of his copybook. Mariana sat close to him
and gazed into his face as he read. She had been right; she turned out
to be a very severe critic. Very few of the verses pleased her. She
preferred the purely lyrical, short ones, to the didactic, as she
expressed it. Nejdanov did not read well. He had not the courage to
attempt any style, and at the same time wanted to avoid a dry tone. It
turned out neither the one thing nor the other. Mariana interrupted him
suddenly by asking if he knew Dobrolubov's beautiful poem, which begins,
"To die for me no terror holds." She read it to him--also not very
well--in a somewhat childish manner.

[To die for me no terror holds, Yet one fear presses on my mind, That
death should on me helpless play A satire of the bitter kind. For much
I fear that o'er my corpse The scalding tears of friends shall flow, And
that, too late, they should with zeal Fresh flowers upon my body throw.
That fate sardonic should recall The ones I loved to my cold side, And
make me lying in the ground, The object of love once denied. That all my
aching heart's desires, So vainly sought for from my birth, Should crowd
unbidden, smiling kind Above my body's mound of earth.]

Nejdanov thought that it was too sad and too bitter. He could not
have written a poem like that, he added, as he had no fears of any one
weeping over his grave... there would be no tears.

"There will be if I outlive you," Mariana observed slowly, and lifting
her eyes to the ceili