“Auntie,” said Vera quickly, “I’m going to marry Dr. Neshtchapov. Only talk to him yourself . . . I can’t.”
And again she went out into the fields. And wandering aimlessly about, she made up her mind that when she was married she would look after the house, doctor the peasants, teach in the school, that she would do all the things that other women of her circle did. And this perpetual dissatisfaction with herself and every one else, this series of crude mistakes which stand up like a mountain before one whenever one looks back upon one’s past, she would accept as her real life to which she was fated, and she would expect nothing better. . . . Of course there was nothing better! Beautiful nature, dreams, music, told one story, but reality another. Evidently truth and happiness existed somewhere outside real life. . . . One must give up one’s own life and merge oneself into this luxuriant steppe, boundless and indifferent as eternity, with its flowers, its ancient barrows, and its distant horizon, and then it would be well with one. . . .
A month later Vera was living at the works.
EXPENSIVE LESSONS
FOR a cultivated man to be ignorant of foreign languages is a great inconvenience. Vorotov became acutely conscious of it when, after taking his degree, he began upon a piece of research work.
“It’s awful,” he said, breathing hard (although he was only twenty-six he was fat, heavy, and suffered from shortness of breath).
“It’s awful! Without languages I’m like a bird without wings. I might just as well give up the work.”
And he made up his mind at all costs to overcome his innate laziness, and to learn French and German; and began to look out for a teacher.