“I don’t know.”
She could not repress an ashamed smile at her timid words, because she felt like a little girl who was concealing something. At last she overcame her shame and said:
“He’s jealous!”
CHAPTER XII
Trirodov loved to be alone. Solitude and silence were a holiday to him. How significant seemed his lonely experiences to him, how delicious his devotion to his visions. Some one came to him, something appeared before him, wonderful apparitions visited him, now in dream, now in his waking hours, and they consumed his sadness.
Sadness was Trirodov’s habitual state. Only while writing his poems and his prose did he find self-oblivion—an astonishing state, in which time is shrivelled up and consumed, in which great inspiration consoles her chosen ones with divine exultation for all burdens, for all annoyances in life.
He wrote much, published little. His fame was very limited—there were few who read his verses and prose, and even among these but a few who acknowledged his talent. His stories and lyrical poems were not distinguished by any especial obscurity or any especial decadent mannerisms. They bore the imprint of something strange and exquisite. It needed an especial kind of soul to appreciate this poetry which seemed so simple at the first glance, yet actually so out of the ordinary.
To others, from among those who knew him, the public’s ignorance of him appeared inexplicable. His capabilities seemed sufficiently great to awaken the attention and admiration of the crowd. But he, to some extent, detested people—perhaps because he was too confident of his own genius—and he never made a definite effort to gratify them. And that was why his works were only rarely published.