“I don’t know,” answered Trirodov sadly.
“What do you desire?” she asked again.
“Perhaps I desire nothing,” said Trirodov. “There are moments when I seem to expect nothing from life; I do what I do unwillingly, as if it were a disagreeable action.”
“How do you live then?” asked Elisaveta in astonishment.
He replied:
“I live in a strange and unreal world. I live—but life goes past me, always past me. Woman’s love, the fire of youth, the stirring of young hopes, remain for ever within the forbidden boundaries of unrealized possibilities—who knows?—perhaps unrealizable.”
The sad, flaming moments of silence were marked by the heavy beats of Elisaveta’s heart. She felt intensely vexed by these sad words of weakness and of dejection, and she did not believe them. But Trirodov went on speaking, and his beautiful but hopelessly sad words sounded like a taunt to her:
“There is so much labour and so little consolation. Life passes by like a dream—a senseless, tormenting dream.”
“If only a radiant dream! If only a tempestuous dream!” exclaimed Elisaveta.
Trirodov smiled and said: